15.3. State Models

The term “state” is used in several different ways in modeling. One usage relates to the changes made to information in a particular domain. An information processor can add or delete facts or modify existing facts in a fact store. After any of these changes, we could say that the fact store is in a different state than previously. In this sense, the number of possible states for an information model (or its equivalent realization) would be too large to count. Individual states of this sort are not identified by name or any other designation, and so the term is usually used in a before-and-after sense in relation to some update.

A different usage of the term state relates not to changes in information but to changes in behavior. ...

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