24 Distributed Object Oriented Logic Programming as a tool for Enterprise Modelling K. L. Clark, N. Skarmeas, T. I. Wang Imperial College Department of Computing London { klc,ns4,tiw} @doc. ic. ac. uk Abstract In this paper we propose a distributed object oriented logic programming language, called DK_Parlog++, that we have developed at Imperial College, as a powerful tool for enterprise modelling and for prototyping an enterprise integration framework. We have used the language to develop a model of our own department and to prototype a generic enterprise integration framework based on role theory. We adopt an agent based approach, the agents being essentially distributed active ob- jects containing both procedural methods and public knowledge, the knowledge being expressed as Prolog facts and rules. Each agent is an instance of some agent class. The agents interact with each other by sending messages to request services, and by remote queries to access each others public knowledge. The agents can either be used as a co- ordination layer for an enterprise integration prototype or to provide an active model of the activities of the enterprise. Each agent inherits all the methods and knowledge of its class and super classes. It has a 'state' partly encoded in its state variables and partly in a dynamic component of its public knowledge. The methods of the agents will be the activity rules, the procedures of the enterprise. The public knowledge of each agent can be used to express the constraints and preconditions of these procedures, or to describe the effects of the procedures. The knowledge, distributed over the the agents and their classes, comprise a distributed 00 knowledge base for the activities of the organisation. This paper assumes acquaintance with the concepts of concurrent object oriented pro- gramming and logic programming, particularly Prolog. Keywords Distributed Object Oriented Logic Programming, Enterprise Modelling, Multi Agent Sys- tems, Organization Modelling P. Bernus et al. (eds.), Modelling and Methodologies for Enterprise Integration © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1996