The CLIMB Rule-Based Language

The CLIMB (Computational Logic for the verIfication and Modeling of Business constraints) language is a declarative rule-based language for the specification of interaction models. This chapter describes syntax and features of the language, showing how it can suitably deal with static as well as dynamic aspects of EBSs; the declarative semantics of the language is presented, providing a formal characterization of

compliance

; finally, some interesting properties, such as

compositionality

of CLIMB specifications, are investigated.

The CLIMB language is a first-order logic-based language; quantification is left implicit in the language, in order to facilitate readability and usability.We will briefly discuss in an informal way and by means of examples how variables are quantified. For an exhaustive description concerning the quantification of variables and the restrictions imposed on the language the interested reader may refer to [8, 58].

In the remainder of the book, we will assume that the reader is familiar with First Order Logic (FOL), Logic Programming (LP) and Prolog. A good introduction to LP is the book by Lloyd [154]; good introductions to Prolog are the books by Sterling and Shapiro [227] and by Bratko [49].