Alan Robinson This set of essays pays tribute to Bob Kowalski on his 60th birthday, an anniversary which gives his friends and colleagues an excuse to celebrate his career as an original thinker, a charismatic communicator, and a forceful intellectual leader. The logic programming community hereby and herein conveys its respect and thanks to him for his pivotal role in creating and fostering the conceptual paradigm which is its raison d'OEtre. The diversity of interests covered here reflects the variety of Bob's concerns. Read on. It is an intellectual feast. Before you begin, permit me to...

Alan Robinson This set of essays pays tribute to Bob Kowalski on his 60th birthday, an anniversary which gives his friends and colleagues an excuse to celebrate his career as an original thinker, a charismatic communicator, and a forceful intellectual leader. The logic programming community hereby and herein conveys its respect and thanks to him for his pivotal role in creating and fostering the conceptual paradigm which is its raison d'OEtre. The diversity of interests covered here reflects the variety of Bob's concerns. Read on. It is an intellectual feast. Before you begin, permit me to...

Logic and object-orientation have come to be recognized as being among the most powerful paradigms for modeling information systems. The term "information systems" is used here in a very general context to denote database systems, software development systems, knowledge base systems, proof support systems, distributed systems and reactive systems. One of the most vigorously researched topics common to all information systems is "formal modeling." An elegant high-level abstraction applicable to both application domain and system domain concepts will always lead to a system design from "outside...