Abstract
The paper presents CaseLP, a logic-based prototyping environment for specifying and verifying complex distributed applications. CaseLP provides a set of languages for modeling intelligent and interacting components (agents) at different levels of abstraction. It also furnishes tools for integrating legacy software into a prototype. The possibility of integrating, into the same executable prototype, agents which are only specified as well as already developed components can prove extremely useful in the engineering process of complex applications. In fact, the reusability of existing components can be verified before the applicationhas been implemented and the developer can be more confident on the correctness of the new components specification, if it has been executed and tested by means of an interaction with the existing components. Besides the aspects of integration and reuse, CaseLP also faces another fundamental issue of nowadays applications, namely distribution. The components which constitute theprototype are logically distributed. The features of the network (latency and reliability of the communication channels between agents) can be set by the prototype developer, thus allowing a realistic simulation of a physically distributed application.