Abstract
We show that theorem proving, logic programming and constraint solving can be combined in a straightforward manner. This is shown not only by setting up a theoretical framework, but also by a real world application: the calculation of banking fees. We tackle the problem of deciding whether such a rule set is total and deterministic. Although these questions are undecidable in general, the restricted form of the investigated rule sets makes them decidable and even tractable in practise. Experiences with our system implemented in Prolog as well as some questions one may have with the application are discussed. The success of this application is due to the combination of constraint logic programming and first-order theorem proving, based on the model elimination calculus which is in the focus of the German research program on deduction. Each approach alone is not powerful enough to find the solution in reasonable time. The procedure proposed here can easily be generalized to analyzing arbitrary rule sets.
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Stolzenburg, F., Thomas, B. (1998). Analyzing Rule Sets for the Calculation of Banking Fees by a Theorem Prover with Constraints. In: Bibel, W., Schmitt, P.H. (eds) Automated Deduction — A Basis for Applications. Applied Logic Series, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0437-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0437-3_10
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