Book excerpt: The book presents logical foundations for rule-based systems. An attempt has been made to provide an in-depth discussion of logical and other aspects of such systems, including languages for knowledge representation, inference mechanisms, inference control, design and verification. The ultimate goal was to provide a deeper theoretical insight into the nature of rule-based systems and put together the most complete presentation including details so frequently skipped in typical textbooks. The book may be useful to potentially wide audience, but it is aimed at providing specific knowledge for graduate, post-graduate and Ph.D. students, as well as knowledge engineers and research workers involved in the domain of AI. It also constitutes a summary of the Author’s research and experience gathered through several years of his research work.