Logic and Databases

At a workshop held in Toulouse, France, in 1977, Gallaire, Minker, and Nicolas stated that logic and databases was a field in its own right. This was the first time that this designation was made. The impetus for it started approximately 20 years ago in 1976 when I visited Gallaire and Nicolas in Toulouse, France. In this article, I provide an assessment about what has been achieved in the 20 years since the field started as a distinct discipline. Prominent among developments was work by Levien and Maron (1965) and Kuhns (1967), and by Green and Raphael (1968a), who were the first to realize the importance of the Robinson (1965) resolution principle for databases.