7,108 research outputs found
Logic Programming as Constructivism
The features of logic programming that
seem unconventional from the viewpoint of classical logic
can be explained in terms of constructivistic logic. We
motivate and propose a constructivistic proof theory of
non-Horn logic programming. Then, we apply this formalization
for establishing results of practical interest.
First, we show that 'stratification can be motivated in a
simple and intuitive way. Relying on similar motivations,
we introduce the larger classes of 'loosely stratified' and
'constructively consistent' programs. Second, we give a
formal basis for introducing quantifiers into queries and
logic programs by defining 'constructively domain
independent* formulas. Third, we extend the Generalized
Magic Sets procedure to loosely stratified and constructively
consistent programs, by relying on a 'conditional
fixpoini procedure
Magic Sets for Disjunctive Datalog Programs
In this paper, a new technique for the optimization of (partially) bound
queries over disjunctive Datalog programs with stratified negation is
presented. The technique exploits the propagation of query bindings and extends
the Magic Set (MS) optimization technique.
An important feature of disjunctive Datalog is nonmonotonicity, which calls
for nondeterministic implementations, such as backtracking search. A
distinguishing characteristic of the new method is that the optimization can be
exploited also during the nondeterministic phase. In particular, after some
assumptions have been made during the computation, parts of the program may
become irrelevant to a query under these assumptions. This allows for dynamic
pruning of the search space. In contrast, the effect of the previously defined
MS methods for disjunctive Datalog is limited to the deterministic portion of
the process. In this way, the potential performance gain by using the proposed
method can be exponential, as could be observed empirically.
The correctness of MS is established thanks to a strong relationship between
MS and unfounded sets that has not been studied in the literature before. This
knowledge allows for extending the method also to programs with stratified
negation in a natural way.
The proposed method has been implemented in DLV and various experiments have
been conducted. Experimental results on synthetic data confirm the utility of
MS for disjunctive Datalog, and they highlight the computational gain that may
be obtained by the new method w.r.t. the previously proposed MS methods for
disjunctive Datalog programs. Further experiments on real-world data show the
benefits of MS within an application scenario that has received considerable
attention in recent years, the problem of answering user queries over possibly
inconsistent databases originating from integration of autonomous sources of
information.Comment: 67 pages, 19 figures, preprint submitted to Artificial Intelligenc
On relating CTL to Datalog
CTL is the dominant temporal specification language in practice mainly due to
the fact that it admits model checking in linear time. Logic programming and
the database query language Datalog are often used as an implementation
platform for logic languages. In this paper we present the exact relation
between CTL and Datalog and moreover we build on this relation and known
efficient algorithms for CTL to obtain efficient algorithms for fragments of
stratified Datalog. The contributions of this paper are: a) We embed CTL into
STD which is a proper fragment of stratified Datalog. Moreover we show that STD
expresses exactly CTL -- we prove that by embedding STD into CTL. Both
embeddings are linear. b) CTL can also be embedded to fragments of Datalog
without negation. We define a fragment of Datalog with the successor build-in
predicate that we call TDS and we embed CTL into TDS in linear time. We build
on the above relations to answer open problems of stratified Datalog. We prove
that query evaluation is linear and that containment and satisfiability
problems are both decidable. The results presented in this paper are the first
for fragments of stratified Datalog that are more general than those containing
only unary EDBs.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure (file .eps
Computing only minimal answers in disjunctive deductive databases
A method is presented for computing minimal answers in disjunctive deductive
databases under the disjunctive stable model semantics. Such answers are
constructed by repeatedly extending partial answers. Our method is complete (in
that every minimal answer can be computed) and does not admit redundancy (in
the sense that every partial answer generated can be extended to a minimal
answer), whence no non-minimal answer is generated. For stratified databases,
the method does not (necessarily) require the computation of models of the
database in their entirety. Compilation is proposed as a tool by which problems
relating to computational efficiency and the non-existence of disjunctive
stable models can be overcome. The extension of our method to other semantics
is also considered.Comment: 48 page
Towards Intelligent Databases
This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques
of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending
with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe
applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can
be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined
using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and
top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for
integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with
a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of
system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss
their advantages over conventional approaches
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