Building Parsers with Java™

15.5. Translating User Queries to Engine Queries

You can extract facts from a logic program by issuing queries whose structures match the types of facts in the program. For example, to retrieve chip facts you can create a structure with functor "chip" and with five variables. When you write a query language for a commercial database engine, the ability to query any table is probably already built into the engine. Because you are using a logic engine here, you must create a query method for each class of fact in the program. Your parser will rely on these query structures when it translates a user query into an engine query. Figure 15.12 shows the query methods for ChipSource.

Figure 15.12. The ChipSource query methods. ChipSource contains protected ...