Computing Preferred Answer Sets by Meta-Interpretation in Answer Set Programming

Most recently, Answer Set Programming (ASP) is attracting interest as a new paradigm for problem solving. An important aspect which needs to be supported is the handling of preferences between rules, for which several approaches have been presented. In this paper, we consider the problem of implementing preference handling approaches by means of meta-interpreters in Answer Set Programming. In particular, we consider the preferred answer set approaches by Brewka and Eiter, by Delgrande, Schaub and Tompits, and by Wang, Zhou and Lin. We present suitable meta-interpreters for these semantics using DLV, which is an efficient engine for ASP. Moreover, we also present a meta-interpreter for the weakly preferred answer set approach by Brewka and Eiter, which uses the weak constraint feature of DLV as a tool for expressing and solving an underlying optimization problem. We also consider advanced meta-interpreters, which make use of graph-based characterizations and often allow for more efficient computations. Our approach shows the suitability of ASP in general and of DLV in particular for fast prototyping. This can be fruitfully exploited for experimenting with new languages and knowledge-representation formalisms.Comment: 34 pages, appeared as a Technical Report at KBS of the Vienna University of Technology, see http://www.kr.tuwien.ac.at/research/reports

Exact Requirements Engineering for Developing Business Process Models

Process modeling is a suitable tool for improving the business processes. Successful process modeling strongly depends on correct requirements engineering. In this paper, we proposed a combination approach for requirements elicitation for developing business models. To do this, BORE (Business-Oriented Requirements Engineering) method is utilized as the base of our work and it is enriched by the important features of the BDD (Business-driven development) method, in order to make the proposed approach appropriate for modeling the more complex processes. As the main result, our method eventuates in exact requirements elicitation that adapts the customers' needs. Also, it let us avoid any rework in the modeling of process. In this paper, we conduct a case study for the paper submission and publication system of a journal. The results of this study not only give a good experience of real world application of proposed approach on a web-based system, also it approves the proficiency of this approach for modeling the complex systems with many sub-processes and complicated relationships.Comment: (IEEE) 3th International Conference on Web Researc

Handling Defeasibilities in Action Domains

Representing defeasibility is an important issue in common sense reasoning. In reasoning about action and change, this issue becomes more difficult because domain and action related defeasible information may conflict with general inertia rules. Furthermore, different types of defeasible information may also interfere with each other during the reasoning. In this paper, we develop a prioritized logic programming approach to handle defeasibilities in reasoning about action. In particular, we propose three action languages {\cal AT}^{0}, {\cal AT}^{1} and {\cal AT}^{2} which handle three types of defeasibilities in action domains named defeasible constraints, defeasible observations and actions with defeasible and abnormal effects respectively. Each language with a higher superscript can be viewed as an extension of the language with a lower superscript. These action languages inherit the simple syntax of {\cal A} language but their semantics is developed in terms of transition systems where transition functions are defined based on prioritized logic programs. By illustrating various examples, we show that our approach eventually provides a powerful mechanism to handle various defeasibilities in temporal prediction and postdiction. We also investigate semantic properties of these three action languages and characterize classes of action domains that present more desirable solutions in reasoning about action within the underlying action languages.Comment: 49 pages, 1 figure, to be appeared in journal Theory and Practice Logic Programmin