Constraints as Mobile Specifications in E-Commerce Applications

We show how quantified constraints expressed in a sub-language of first-order logic, against a shared data model that is free to evolve, provide an excellent way of transporting domain-specific semantics along with the data. In this form it can be processed automatically by various intelligent components, instead of requiring human intervention. It can also be combined with other constraints, by algebraic transformation against a common data model, and then passed to an appropriate solver. These techniques have been tested in a classic e-business application scenario: configuring a product from parts selected from e-vendors’ catalogues, whilst conforming to requirements specific to the parts, expressed as mobile constraints.

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