Logical Foundations of Rule-Based Systems -- Propositional Logic -- Predicate Calculus -- Attribute Logic -- Resolution -- Dual Resolution -- Principles of Rule-Based Systems -- Basic Structure of Rule-Based Systems -- Rule-Based Systems in Propositional Logic -- Rule-Based Systems in Attributive Logic -- Rule-Based Systems in First-Order Logic -- Inference Control in Rule-Based Systems -- Logic Programming and Prolog -- Verification of Rule-Based Systems -- Principles of Verification of Rule-Based Systems -- Analysis of Redundancy -- Analysis of Indeterminism and Inconsistency -- Reduction of Rule-Based Systems -- Analysis of Completeness -- Design of Rule-Based Systems -- An Introduction to Design of Rule-Based Systems -- Logical Foundations: the ?-Trees Based Approach -- Design of Tabular Rule-Based Systems with XTT -- Design Example: Thermostat -- Concluding Remarks.

The book presents logical foundations for rule-based systems, as seen by the Author. An attempt has been made to provide an in-depth discussion of logical and other aspects of such systems, including languages for knowledge representation, inference mechanisms, inference control, design and verification. The ultimate goal was to provide a deeper theoretical insight into the nature of rule-based systems and put together the most complete presentation including details so frequently skipped in typical textbooks. The main parts present material on: • logical foundations of rule-based systems (Part I); • principles of rule-based systems structures, knowledge representation languages, inference and inference control (Part II); • verification of formal properties of rule-based systems (Part III); • design methodology for efficient development of such systems (Part IV). The book may be useful to potentially wide audience, but it is aimed at providing specific knowledge for graduate, post-graduate and Ph.D. students, as well as knowledge engineers and research workers involved in the domain of AI. It also constitutes a summary of the Author’s research and experience gathered through several years of his research work.