The hard facts about SICStus Prolog 4.9.0

Feature Highlights

SICStus Prolog provides the means to integrate a very powerful Prolog engine in advanced, portable computing applications. It is the ideal choice for applications that require reasoning, search or pattern matching capabilities (e.g. intelligent web, rule engine, natural or formal language, and expert system style applications).

SICStus Prolog provides tools for delivering stand-alone applications as well as modules that can be linked with code written in other languages to create reliable solutions with Prolog embedded.

The latest version is 4.9.0, featuring:

Performance

• Based on a virtual machine (WAM), emulated by efficient C code
• WAM code compiled just-in-time to native code for x86-based platforms
• 303 MLips on a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-4790. See Performance Summary.

Compliance

• International Standard ISO/IEC 13211-1 (PROLOG: Part 1—General Core), plus Technical Corrigendum 1, 2 & 3
• Internet Protocol versions 4 (IPv4) and 6 (IPv6)
• Unicode 15

Deployment

• Stand-alone, all-in-one-file, and embedded applications
• Debuggable deployed applications
• Multiple virtual machine instances in the same process

Interoperability

• C & C++
• .NET & Java
• Tcl/Tk
• ODBC
• XML
• JSON and JSON RPC
• Microsoft COM Automation objects
• MiniZinc

Interactive Development Environments

• SPIDER, the Eclipse-based development environment
• GNU Emacs interface

Program Development

• A powerful IDE, with refactoring, on-the-fly code analysis, refactorings, source debugger, and other advanced features.
• Unit-test framework, for convenient, automatic testing of your programs
• Code coverage analysis with IDE support, for checking that all lines of code are reached in your programs
• Execution profiling with IDE support, for finding out where your programs spend their time. No instrumentation or recompilation required.

  On Linux, the 'perf' tool can be use to profile JIT-compiled Prolog code.

• Gauge GUI for conveniently browsing execution profiles

  Also available in the IDE.

• A standalone Cross-referencer tool, for finding undefined or unreachable code in your programs.

  Also available in the IDE.

• A standalone Determinacy checker tool, for spotting unwanted nondeterminacy in your programs.

  Also done on-the-fly in the IDE.

• Procedure box debugger with:
  • Breakpointing debugger, with programming and advice features
  • Source-linked debugging with IDE support
  • Tracking variable bindings with IDE support

Special Features

• Do-loops, a concise control structure for common, simple iterations
• Hooks for term & goal expansion, messages & queries, file search paths, etc.
• Coroutines, essential for constraint solvers
• Attributed variables, essential for constraint solvers
• Mutable terms
• Unbounded precision integers
• Object-Oriented Programming syntax available. The resulting objects are modifiable data structures that provide a clean and efficient alternative to storing data in the Prolog database.
• Data Structure Inter-Access allows Prolog to directly access C-structs, providing a "lean and mean" alternative to storing data in the Prolog database
• Constraint solvers:
  • MiniZinc interface
  • Finite Domains and its Debugger
  • Unsupported Booleans
  • Unsupported Reals/Rationals
  • Unsupported Constraint Handling Rules

Library Modules

• >1000 exported predicates
• Common abstract data types
• Operating system access
• File system access
• Processes
• Sockets (IPv4 and IPv6)