README.md

Atomic Database 2.0

What is Atomic Database

Atomic Database is a very simple entity-attribute-value database back end with a series of layers in front:

1. A Logic programming langauge with access to the database, to answer questions about and undersand relations in the data. A simple S-expression syntax can also expose this in the final layer.
2. A Natural Language layer that decides whether you're asking something that the logic language needs to solve, or something that can be asked or put directly into the database.
3. A user interface to interact with all this.

The long and short of it is that you get a fairly decent actual database, suited for very flexible, interactive datasets with not a lot of imposed structure, that can answer complex and declaritive questions about its data based on both local questions and knowledge about the data and how it relates that can be programmed in ahead of time. Much of the abilities of logic programming languages can be used to simulate SQL queries and such, but with much less specific micromanaging, so it really is more akin to asking questions.

Atomic Database 1.0 had all of these features, in one form or another, but it was pretty brittle and limited.

What's New in Version Two?

The first version of Atomic Database, which is currently on the master branch, was written in a hurry during a Hackathon with someone I had just met that day. He was an amazing programmer but reading over his UI code after the fact, it set in that I wouldn't be able to get the jQuery spagahetti that was left to do much more. Worse, JavaScript really isn't designed to either be a stable, self-contained binary or work as a ML and AI programming language. I was lucky I had found some good libraries but the old code had reached most of its potential, and worse, it wasn't going to run easily on my new computer. To solve this, I decided to rewrite Atomic Database in Python. Python is not usually my first choice for projects, but I do know it and it is the best language to do ML related things in, specifically natural language processing in this case. Plus, Kivy is a kick-ass UI library.

My plan looks like this at the moment:

• Figure out how to package and distribute a stable binary.
• Implement a more real-life EAV database. EAV databases aren't well recieved or much used in the wider industry, but they lend themselves really well to logic programming and natural language mapping. I'll try to use real algorithms from Wikipedia and other resources so it isn't just a 2D array.
• Figure out how to store databases
• Implement a simple logic programming language. I didn't want to use another library like I did for Atomic Database 1.0 because this database has some very specific needs, and for AD1 that led to some very hacky, unstable code. Plus, implementing my own is fun!
• Implement a Natural Language layer to interface with both the database or the logic language depending on what type of request is fed to it. This is going to be difficult to do reliably, so...
• Make a simple S-expression language to interface more reliably and powerfully with the database. Call it a Pro-mode or something.
• Implement a way to reference and store "rules" about the data relations in the database. This is a hugely important one.
• Implement a UI in ImGUI. This can be simple: a list of text boxes on one side, each with an editable title and a "new" button below them for rules, and a table view on the other side for the actual database, and then a long query box at the bottom.
• Add advanced language constructs such as cond, unification, scope.
• Search functions should be available for entities, attributes. Use internal query system for this, but present a nice UI.
• Add metadata relational database for attributes and (optionally) entities. This metadata should include:
  • Official name
    • Range of normal (or allowed) values
    • Data type
    • Description
    • (Auto generated) used by entities
• Use metadata to display UI elements in the database view
• Add validation and type-checking warnings (or errors!) to language and UI
• Add lists
• Add list support to attribute metadata
• Typecheck list internals properly
• Add immediate expressions and list descturing
• Remove dynamic and static scope implementations and use lexical scope based on where things are defined. Make sure nested function calls only get data from their input variables. Create an optional way to access global variables
• Make sure rules can call themselves, and check that unification works for recursive functions. Provide a way to iterate through using list destructuring
• Add automatic conversion to a relational database for export
• Create a separate entity type to validate with, instead of strings
• Focus on adding more variety to the NL recognizer
• Create a proper parser/evaluator for expressions, instead of evaling them.
• Add immediate functions (that work inside expression delimiters) and can also be added as rows/columns to the Table View, so that it works like a spreadsheet.
• Extend the natural language interface to support some (all if possible!) advanced language constructs
• Create a chatbot (or "repl") interface for adding data and querying the database, where the history of your bindings and queries is interactable inline in the transcript, and when you click next on any result, the backtracking is visible
• Create an entity tree relation graph, and allow entity dropdowns to be turned into regular text at the user's convenience.
• Create a way to externally save and load plain-test rules and query transcripts
• Allow saving and loading of the database in plaintext
• Create a method of making UI elements and interfaces from inside rules (perhaps a main createGUI rule?)

Requirements

You can use the setup.rb script provided in the home directory to install the program files to /opt and the atomicdb script to /usr/local/bin. The atomicdb script just excecutes the files in /opt. Note that running ./setup.rb by itself gives you a summary of what each command does:

You need to supply setup.rb with a command to tell it what to do!
Available commands:

    install         -- physically install Atomic Database (as atomicdb) to your computer
    develop         -- symlink Atomic Database so it runs as if it were `install`ed
    uninstall       -- undo all of the things develop or install did

Choose one of these commands please.

The requirements are stored in requirements.txt, generated by pip freeze. The main packages you have to install if you can't use the requirements.txt are:

• spaCy and en_core_web_sm
  • Which you can install by doing python -m download en_core_web_sm after you've installed spaCy
• imgui[full]
• sexpdata
• You will also need to install SDL2

To run, use:

python3 AtomicDatabase/__main__.py <name of database, or nothing>

Or, if you've used setup.rb to install/link the program, you can use:

atomicdb <name of database, or nothing>

Screenshots

To find screenshots, look in the "screenshots" directory

Videos

Also coming soon!

Contributing

If you want to contribute, awesome! The only rule is: never commit broken code (if you know its broken). If you have questions, you can open issues for them, I'll make a documentation label.