Datalog

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What Does Datalog Mean?

Datalog is a programming language used in deductive database work. It is part of another language called Prolog and incorporates basic logic principles for data integration, database queries, etc. Datalog is used by many open-source systems and other database systems.

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Techopedia Explains Datalog

Database programmers like Datalog for its simplicity. As a simple declarative logic-based language, Datalog relies on a conventional clause format. In a declarative language, the user enters the items that he/she wants to find and then the system takes over, finding values that comply with the user’s request.

Like other types of query systems, a Datalog query involves setting up a command-based premise: for example, many simpler Datalog queries consist of an object and a set of modifiers or constraints in parentheses. The simple syntax allows administrators to quickly learn how to get the results they need from the database. However, as with other systems, Datalog users have to deal with the emergence of raw or unstructured data sets in a database technology. In other words, whereas databases of the past tended to have strict “table” data formats, today’s databases may have much more abstracted information that has to be queried and handled in a different way.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.