OpenCog CogServer

The OpenCog Cogserver is a network and job server for the OpenCog framework.

The main project site is at https://opencog.org

Overview

The CogServer provides a network command-line console server and a job scheduler. The network console server provides a fast, efficient telnet interface, giving access to scheme (guile) and python command-lines. This itself is notable: by default, Python does not allow multiple users to access it at the same time. As to scheme/guile, there is an ice-9 REPL server, but the CogServer is an order of magnitude faster, and infinitely more stable, free of lockups, hangs and crashes.

Both Python and Scheme can be used by multiple users at the same time, all obtaining access to the same AtomSpace. Thus, the Cogserver provides not only a convenient interface for ad-hoc data processing, but also provides a very good (and easy, and strong) way of doing bulk data transfers. In particular, the transfer of multiple megabytes of Atoms and (Truth)Values as UTF-8 (i.e. human-readable) data is easy and efficient. In particular, it does not require fiddling with complex binary formats or protocols or the use of protocol libraries or API's. (We're looking at you, HTTP, REST, ZeroMQ, ProtoBuff and friends. You are all very sophisticated, yes, but are hard to use. And sometimes painfully slow.)

The job scheduler (aka 'MindAgents' or just 'Agents') is an experimental prototype for controlling multiple threads and assigning thread processing priorities, in an AtomSpace-aware fashion. It is in need of the caring love and attention from an interested developer.

For more info, please consult the CogServer wiki page.

Building and Running

The CogServer is build exactly the same way that all other OpenCog components are built:

clone https://github.com/opencog/cogserver
cd cogserver
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j

For additional information on dependencies and general hand-holding with the build, see the building Opencog wiki.

Prerequisites

To build and run the CogServer, the packages listed below are required. With a few exceptions, most Linux distributions will provide these packages. Users of Ubuntu may use the dependency installer from the /opencog/octool repository. Users of any version of Linux may use the Dockerfile to quickly build a container in which OpenCog will be built and run.

cogutil

Common OpenCog C++ utilities http://github.com/opencog/cogutil It uses exactly the same build procedure as this package. Be sure to sudo make install at the end.

AtomSpace

OpenCog AtomSpace database and reasoning engine http://github.com/opencog/atomspace It uses exactly the same build procedure as this package. Be sure to sudo make install at the end.

Unit tests

To build and run the unit tests, from the ./build directory enter (after building opencog as above):

    make test

Radivarig/cogserver