The Prototype Knowledge Base to Represent the Dynamics of Legal Provisions

Jacek Martinek* and Jolanta Cybulka**
Poznań University of Technology
Institute of Control and Information Engineering


The document is a quick reference to the programs of the prototype knowledge base aimed at the representation of the legal provision’s change in time. The implementation is based on the provisions dynamics model introduced in [1, 2] and programs are written in the SWI-Prolog/XPCE (version 5.2.13).

The package of programs and specifications contains the following files:

  • ProvisionsDynamicsProgram.txt – a Prolog implementation of the knowledge base procedures accompanied by the explanations and comments.
  • PrologSpecificationsExample1.txt – a short exemplary specifications of provisions. To run the example it is necessary to ‘consult’ the program file, next to ‘consult’ the example file and then to start the program using the procedure ‘start’.
  • PrologSpecificationsExample2.txt – another short example. Please, note that the examples should be run separately.
  • XML-into-PrologSpecifConverter.txt – this is a converter of XML specifications of provisions into Prolog specifications. The resulting Prolog specification may be used together with the knowledge base procedures. The procedure ‘start’ is used to run the converter.
  • XML-Spec-Example1.zip – an example of a provision specification structured in XML according to the DTD given in the separate file (see below).
  • DTD-for-XMLSpecifications.zip – the Data Type Definition of the XML provision specification format. The converter is based on this DTD.

[1] Martinek J., Cybulka J. Dynamics of Legal Provisions and its Representation. ICAIL’05, June 6-11, 2005, Bologna, Italy, ACM Press, p. 20-24.
[2] Cybulka J., Martinek J. Handling the Dynamics of Norms – A Knowledge-Based Approach, Chapter in: Knowledge-Driven Computing. Knowledge Engineering and Intelligent Computations, (Carlos Cotta, Simeon Reich, Robert Schaefer, Antoni Ligęza, Eds.), Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 31-43.


*   jacek.martinek@gmail.com
** jolac@man.poznan.pl