Abstract
This chapter discusses the fifth generation language in the 80s. Fourth generation languages tend to evolve towards allowing the specification of “what to do” rather than “how to do it.” Relational database usage is also closer to the “what” than to the “how” of data. Such an approach to programming is said to be declarative that is descriptive rather than procedural or navigational in the database context. Some languages have emerged that do stress the descriptive aspects of programming. They constitute the fifth generation of programming languages. Given this pragmatic definition, it is a fact that many high-level languages have descriptive features combined with procedural ones. There is still a major gap between the fifth generation and its predecessors. COBOL, for instance, offers quite some descriptive power in its data division but not in its procedure division, which is command-oriented. The fifth-generation languages tend to emphasize the data-centered approach.
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