Review of "The description logic handbook" by Franz Bader, Diego Calvanese, Deborah L. McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, Peter Patel-Schneider. Cambridge University Press 2003.

State Machines – A Method for High-Level System Design and Analysis, is a book about a systems engineering method. But what is an Abstract State Machine (ASM)? Simply put, ASMs are pseudo-code representations of algorithms, which have definable states. By constructing an ASM model of a system, the practitioner is able to determine the behavior of the proposed system at various levels of detail. Each method, function or procedure can be represented as an ASM, and therefore testing, expanding or updating the system during the design phase becomes relatively painless. Abstract State Machines is composed of nine chapters, and follows a basic introduction, definition, exploration and review format. Chapter 1 gives the goals of the book, presents the ASM notation, and provides a brief synopsis of the benefits of learning how to use ASMs. Chapter 2 gives a working definition of an ASM, provides some basic examples and includes a few exercises to familiarize the reader with the ASM method. Chapters three through eight explore varying levels of detail in ASMs and their applications, which are illustrated through intuitive examples. Finally, Chapter 9 gives a history of ASMs and their research. Throughout the core of the book, the authors present increasingly detailed descriptions and examples of ASMs and their usefulness. ASM examples are presented in a mathematical context and include lemmas, theorems, proofs and corollaries. Each section of every chapter (except 1 and 9) contains exercises to be completed by the reader. A CD, which includes the full text, accompanies this book, and also contains Power Point slides for each chapter and solutions to the exercises. The Power Point slides are extremely detailed and could be used to support a lecture course. As the authors suggest in the introduction, this book was written with a dual-purpose. First, this book can be used as a handbook, or, in the author's words, " ... it is conceived as a Modeling Handbook for the Working Software Engineer who needs a practical high-precision design instrument for his daily work, and as a Compendium for Abstract State Machines. " Secondly, Abstract State Machines can be used as a textbook. This book is not for the casual reader, and therefore should not be used in a lower-level college course, but rather in an upper-level or graduate course where the students should have a genuine interest in the material. Students should have a background in discrete mathematics …