271 research outputs found
Answer Sets for Consistent Query Answering in Inconsistent Databases
A relational database is inconsistent if it does not satisfy a given set of
integrity constraints. Nevertheless, it is likely that most of the data in it
is consistent with the constraints. In this paper we apply logic programming
based on answer sets to the problem of retrieving consistent information from a
possibly inconsistent database. Since consistent information persists from the
original database to every of its minimal repairs, the approach is based on a
specification of database repairs using disjunctive logic programs with
exceptions, whose answer set semantics can be represented and computed by
systems that implement stable model semantics. These programs allow us to
declare persistence by defaults and repairing changes by exceptions. We
concentrate mainly on logic programs for binary integrity constraints, among
which we find most of the integrity constraints found in practice.Comment: 34 page
Composition and Inversion of Schema Mappings
In the recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to the development of
solid foundations for the composition and inversion of schema mappings. In this
paper, we review the proposals for the semantics of these crucial operators.
For each of these proposals, we concentrate on the three following problems:
the definition of the semantics of the operator, the language needed to express
the operator, and the algorithmic issues associated to the problem of computing
the operator. It should be pointed out that we primarily consider the
formalization of schema mappings introduced in the work on data exchange. In
particular, when studying the problem of computing the composition and inverse
of a schema mapping, we will be mostly interested in computing these operators
for mappings specified by source-to-target tuple-generating dependencies
Cryptocurrency Mining Games with Economic Discount and Decreasing Rewards
In the consensus protocols used in most cryptocurrencies, participants called miners must find valid blocks of transactions and append them to a shared tree-like data structure. Ideally, the rules of the protocol should ensure that miners maximize their gains if they follow a default strategy, which consists on appending blocks only to the longest branch of the tree, called the blockchain. Our goal is to understand under which circumstances are miners encouraged to follow the default strategy. Unfortunately, most of the existing models work with simplified payoff functions, without considering the possibility that rewards decrease over time because of the game rules (like in Bitcoin), nor integrating the fact that a miner naturally prefers to be paid earlier than later (the economic concept of discount). In order to integrate these factors, we consider a more general model where issues such as economic discount and decreasing rewards can be set as parameters of an infinite stochastic game. In this model, we study the limit situation in which a miner does not receive a full reward for a block if it stops being in the blockchain. We show that if rewards are not decreasing, then miners do not have incentives to create new branches, no matter how high their computational power is. On the other hand, when working with decreasing rewards similar to those in Bitcoin, we show that miners have an incentive to create such branches. Nevertheless, this incentive only occurs when a miner controls a proportion of the computational power which is close to half of the computational power of the entire network
First-Order and Temporal Logics for Nested Words
Nested words are a structured model of execution paths in procedural
programs, reflecting their call and return nesting structure. Finite nested
words also capture the structure of parse trees and other tree-structured data,
such as XML. We provide new temporal logics for finite and infinite nested
words, which are natural extensions of LTL, and prove that these logics are
first-order expressively-complete. One of them is based on adding a "within"
modality, evaluating a formula on a subword, to a logic CaRet previously
studied in the context of verifying properties of recursive state machines
(RSMs). The other logic, NWTL, is based on the notion of a summary path that
uses both the linear and nesting structures. For NWTL we show that
satisfiability is EXPTIME-complete, and that model-checking can be done in time
polynomial in the size of the RSM model and exponential in the size of the NWTL
formula (and is also EXPTIME-complete). Finally, we prove that first-order
logic over nested words has the three-variable property, and we present a
temporal logic for nested words which is complete for the two-variable fragment
of first-order.Comment: revised and corrected version of Mar 03, 201
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