USING THE EVENT CALCULUS FOR TRACKING THE NORMATIVE STATE OF CONTRACTS,
International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, Vol. 14, Nos.
2-3 (2005) 99-129 

Copyright: World Scientific Publishing Company
 
Author(s): ANDREW D. H. FARRELL, MAREK J. SERGOT, MATHIAS SALLÉ,
CLAUDIO BARTOLINI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218843005001110
 
Abstract: In this work, we have been principally concerned with the
representation of contracts so that their normative state may be tracked in an
automated fashion over their deployment lifetime. The normative state of a
contract, at a particular time, is the aggregation of instances of normative
relations that hold between contract parties at that time, plus the current
values of contract variables. The effects of contract events on the normative
state of a contract are specified using an XML formalization of the Event
Calculus, called ecXML. We use an example mail service agreement from the domain
of web services to ground the discussion of our work. We give a characterization
of the agreement according to the normative concepts of obligation, power and
permission, and show how the ecXML representation may be used to track the state
of the agreement, according to a narrative of contract events. We also give a
description of a state tracking architecture, and a contract deployment tool,
both of which have been implemented in the course of our work. 
Keywords: Contract state tracking; event calculus
 
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