2,558 research outputs found
Metatheory of actions: beyond consistency
Consistency check has been the only criterion for theory evaluation in
logic-based approaches to reasoning about actions. This work goes beyond that
and contributes to the metatheory of actions by investigating what other
properties a good domain description in reasoning about actions should have. We
state some metatheoretical postulates concerning this sore spot. When all
postulates are satisfied together we have a modular action theory. Besides
being easier to understand and more elaboration tolerant in McCarthy's sense,
modular theories have interesting properties. We point out the problems that
arise when the postulates about modularity are violated and propose algorithmic
checks that can help the designer of an action theory to overcome them
Lightweight and static verification of UML executable models
Executable models play a key role in many software development methods by facilitating the (semi)automatic implementation/execution of the software system under development. This is possible because executable models promote a complete and fine-grained specification of the system behaviour. In this context, where models are the basis of the whole development process, the quality of the models has a high impact on the final quality of software systems derived from them. Therefore, the existence of methods to verify the correctness of executable models is crucial. Otherwise, the quality of the executable models (and in turn the quality of the final system generated from them) will be compromised. In this paper a lightweight and static verification method to assess the correctness of executable models is proposed. This method allows us to check whether the operations defined as part of the behavioural model are able to be executed without breaking the integrity of the structural model and returns a meaningful feedback that helps repairing the detected inconsistencies.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
A Logic Programming Approach to Knowledge-State Planning: Semantics and Complexity
We propose a new declarative planning language, called K, which is based on
principles and methods of logic programming. In this language, transitions
between states of knowledge can be described, rather than transitions between
completely described states of the world, which makes the language well-suited
for planning under incomplete knowledge. Furthermore, it enables the use of
default principles in the planning process by supporting negation as failure.
Nonetheless, K also supports the representation of transitions between states
of the world (i.e., states of complete knowledge) as a special case, which
shows that the language is very flexible. As we demonstrate on particular
examples, the use of knowledge states may allow for a natural and compact
problem representation. We then provide a thorough analysis of the
computational complexity of K, and consider different planning problems,
including standard planning and secure planning (also known as conformant
planning) problems. We show that these problems have different complexities
under various restrictions, ranging from NP to NEXPTIME in the propositional
case. Our results form the theoretical basis for the DLV^K system, which
implements the language K on top of the DLV logic programming system.Comment: 48 pages, appeared as a Technical Report at KBS of the Vienna
University of Technology, see http://www.kr.tuwien.ac.at/research/reports
On the Executability of Interactive Computation
The model of interactive Turing machines (ITMs) has been proposed to
characterise which stream translations are interactively computable; the model
of reactive Turing machines (RTMs) has been proposed to characterise which
behaviours are reactively executable. In this article we provide a comparison
of the two models. We show, on the one hand, that the behaviour exhibited by
ITMs is reactively executable, and, on the other hand, that the stream
translations naturally associated with RTMs are interactively computable. We
conclude from these results that the theory of reactive executability subsumes
the theory of interactive computability. Inspired by the existing model of ITMs
with advice, which provides a model of evolving computation, we also consider
RTMs with advice and we establish that a facility of advice considerably
upgrades the behavioural expressiveness of RTMs: every countable transition
system can be simulated by some RTM with advice up to a fine notion of
behavioural equivalence.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figure
A generic framework for the analysis and specialization of logic programs
The relationship between abstract interpretation and partial
deduction has received considerable attention and (partial) integrations have been proposed starting from both the partial deduction and abstract interpretation perspectives. In this work we present what we argüe is the first fully described generic algorithm for efñcient and precise integration of abstract interpretation and partial deduction. Taking as starting point state-of-the-art algorithms for context-sensitive, polyvariant abstract interpretation and (abstract) partial deduction, we present
an algorithm which combines the best of both worlds. Key ingredients include the accurate success propagation inherent to abstract interpretation and the powerful program transformations achievable by partial deduction. In our algorithm, the calis which appear in the analysis graph
are not analyzed w.r.t. the original definition of the procedure but w.r.t. specialized definitions of these procedures. Such specialized definitions are obtained by applying both unfolding and abstract executability. Our framework is parametric w.r.t. different control strategies and abstract domains. Different combinations of such parameters correspond to existing algorithms for program analysis and specialization. Simultaneously, our approach opens the door to the efñcient computation of strictly more
precise results than those achievable by each of the individual techniques.
The algorithm is now one of the key components of the CiaoPP analysis
and specialization system
Enhancing workflow-nets with data for trace completion
The growing adoption of IT-systems for modeling and executing (business)
processes or services has thrust the scientific investigation towards
techniques and tools which support more complex forms of process analysis. Many
of them, such as conformance checking, process alignment, mining and
enhancement, rely on complete observation of past (tracked and logged)
executions. In many real cases, however, the lack of human or IT-support on all
the steps of process execution, as well as information hiding and abstraction
of model and data, result in incomplete log information of both data and
activities. This paper tackles the issue of automatically repairing traces with
missing information by notably considering not only activities but also data
manipulated by them. Our technique recasts such a problem in a reachability
problem and provides an encoding in an action language which allows to
virtually use any state-of-the-art planning to return solutions
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