The paper introduces a semantics for definite logic programs expressed in terms of SLD-derivations and studies various properties of SLD-derivations by using the above semantics, The semantics of a program is a goal-independent denotation, which can equivalently be specified by a denotational semantics and a transition system. The denotation is proved to be correct, minimal, AND-compositional and OR-compositional. The denotational semantics and the transition system are defined in terms of a set of primitive semantic operators, whose properties are directly related to the properties of the denotation. The SLD-derivations semantics has been designed to act as collecting semantics for a framework of abstract semantics (Comini et al., 1995, 1996). (C) 1999-Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
