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<h2 id="sec:swiprolog"><a id="sec:1.1"><span class="sec-nr">1.1</span> <span class="sec-title">Positioning 
SWI-Prolog</span></a></h2>

<a id="sec:swiprolog"></a>

<p>Most implementations of the Prolog language are designed to serve a 
limited set of use cases. SWI-Prolog is no exception to this rule. 
SWI-Prolog positions itself primarily as a Prolog environment for 
`programming in the large' and use cases where it plays a central role 
in an application, i.e., where it acts as `glue' between components. At 
the same time, SWI-Prolog aims at providing a productive rapid 
prototyping environment. Its orientation towards programming in the 
large is backed up by scalability, compiler speed, program structuring 
(modules), support for multithreading to accommodate servers, Unicode 
and interfaces to a large number of document formats, protocols and 
programming languages. Prototyping is facilitated by good development 
tools, both for command line usage as for usage with graphical 
development tools. Demand loading of predicates from the library and a 
`make' facility avoids the <em>requirement</em> for using declarations 
and reduces typing.

<p>SWI-Prolog is traditionally strong in education because it is free 
and portable, but also because of its compatibility with textbooks and 
its easy-to-use environment.

<p>Note that these positions do not imply that the system cannot be used 
with other scenarios. SWI-Prolog is used as an embedded language where 
it serves as a small rule subsystem in a large application. It is also 
used as a deductive database. In some cases this is the right choice 
because SWI-Prolog has features that are required in the application, 
such as threading or Unicode support. In general though, for example, 
GNU-Prolog is more suited for embedding because it is small and can 
compile to native code, XSB is better for deductive databases because it 
provides advanced resolution techniques (tabling), and ECLiPSe is better 
at constraint handling.

<p>The syntax and set of built-in predicates is based on the ISO 
standard
<cite><a class="cite" href="Bibliography.html#stdprolog:98">Hodgson, 
1998</a></cite>. Most extensions follow the `Edinburgh tradition' (DEC10 
Prolog and C-Prolog) and Quintus Prolog <cite><a class="cite" href="Bibliography.html#QUINTUS:manual">Qui, 
1997</a></cite>. The infrastructure for constraint programming is based 
on hProlog
<cite><a class="cite" href="Bibliography.html#Demoen:CW350">Demoen, 2002</a></cite>. 
Some libraries are copied from the YAP<sup class="fn">1<span class="fn-text"><a class="url" href="http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/\~{}vsc/Yap/">http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/\~{}vsc/Yap/</a></span></sup> 
system. Together with YAP we developed a portability framework (see
<a class="sec" href="dialect.html">section C</a>). This framework has 
been filled for SICStus Prolog, YAP and IF/Prolog.

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