Irina Trubitsyna

On the Termination of Logic Programs with Function Symbols

Recently there has been an increasing interest in the bottom-up evaluation of the semantics of logic programs with complex terms. The main problem due to the presence of functional symbols in the head of rules is that the corresponding ground program could be infinite and that finiteness of models and termination of the evaluation procedure is not guaranteed. This paper introduces, by deeply analyzing program structure, new decidable criteria, called safety and Gamma-acyclicity, for checking termination of logic programs with function symbols under bottom-up evaluation. These criteria guarantee that stable models are finite and computable, as it is possible to generate a finitely ground program equivalent to the source program. We compare new criteria with other decidable criteria known in the literature and show that the Gamma-acyclicity criterion is the most general one. We also discuss its application in answering bound queries.

atalog: A logic language for expressing search and optimization problems

This paper presents a logic language for expressing search and optimization problems. Specifically, first a language obtained by extending (positive) DATALOG with intuitive and efficient constructs (namely, stratified negation, constraints, and exclusive disjunction) is introduced. Next, a further restricted language only using a restricted form of disjunction to define (nondeterministically) subsets (or partitions) of relations is investigated. This language, called atalog , captures the power of DATALOG ¬ in expressing search and optimization problems. A system prototype implementing atalog is presented. The system translates atalog queries into Optimization Programming Language (OPL) programs which are executed by the ILOG OPL Development Studio. Our proposal combines easy formulation of problems, expressed by means of a declarative logic language, with the efficiency of the ILOG System. Several experiments show the effectiveness of this approach.

Optimization of bound disjunctive queries with constraints

This paper presents a technique for the optimization of bound queries over disjunctive deductive databases with constraints. The proposed approach is an extension of the well-known Magic-Set technique and is well-suited for being integrated in current bottom-up (stable) model inference engines. More specifically, it is based on the exploitation of binding propagation techniques which reduce the size of the data relevant to answer the query and, consequently, reduces both the complexity of computing a single model and the number of models to be considered. The motivation of this work stems from the observation that traditional binding propagation optimization techniques for bottom-up model generator systems, simulating the goal driven evaluation of top-down engines, are only suitable for positive (disjunctive) queries, while hard problems are expressed using unstratified negation. The main contribution of the paper consists in the extension of a previous technique, defined for positive disjunctive queries, to queries containing both disjunctive heads and constraints (a simple and expressive form of unstratified negation). As the usual way of expressing declaratively hard problems is based on the guess-and-check technique, where the guess part is expressed by means of disjunctive rules and the check part is expressed by means of constraints, the technique proposed here is highly relevant for the optimization of queries expressing hard problems. The value of the technique has been proved by several experiments.

Feasibility Conditions and Preference Criteria in Querying and Repairing Inconsistent Databases

Recently there has been an increasing interest in integrity constraints associated with relational databases and in inconsistent databases, i.e. databases which do not satisfy integrity constraints. In the presence of inconsistencies two main techniques have been proposed: compute repairs, i.e. minimal set of insertion and deletion operations, called database repairs, and compute consistent answers, i.e. identify the sets of atoms which we can assume true, false and undefined without modifying the database. In this paper feasibility conditions and preference criteria are introduced which, associated with integrity constraints, allow to restrict the number of repairs and to increase the power of queries over inconsistent databases. Moreover, it is studied the complexity of computing repairs and the expressive power of relational queries over databases with integrity constraints, feasibility conditions and preference criteria.

Detecting decidable classes of finitely ground logic programs with function symbols

In this paper we propose a new technique for checking whether the bottom-up evaluation of logic programs with function symbols terminates. The technique is based on the definition of mappings from arguments to strings of function symbols, representing possible values which could be taken by arguments during the bottom-up evaluation. Such mappings can be computed by transforming the original program into a unary logic program whose termination is decidable. Starting from mappings we can identify mapping-restricted arguments, a subset of limited arguments, that is, arguments which can take values from finite domains. The class of mapping-restricted programs, consisting of programs whose arguments are mapping-restricted, is terminating under the bottom-up computation as all its arguments can take values from finite domains. We study the complexity of the presented approach and compare it with other techniques known in the literature. The presented technique is relevant as it individuates as terminating programs not detected by other criteria proposed so far and can be combined with other techniques to further enlarge the class of programs recognized as terminating under the bottom-up evaluation.

Logic programming with function symbols: Checking termination of bottom-up evaluation through program adornments

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in enhancing answer set solvers by allowing function symbols. Since the introduction of function symbols makes common inference tasks undecidable, research has focused on identifying classes of programs allowing only a restricted use of function symbols while ensuring decidability of common inference tasks. Finitely-ground programs, introduced in Calimeri et al. (2008), are guaranteed to admit a finite number of stable models with each of them of finite size. Stable models of such programs can be computed and thus common inference tasks become decidable. Unfortunately, checking whether a program is finitely-ground is semi-decidable. This has led to several decidable criteria, called termination criteria, providing sufficient conditions for a program to be finitely-ground. This paper presents a new technique that, used in conjunction with current termination criteria, allows us to detect more programs as finitely-ground. Specifically, the proposed technique takes a logic program P and transforms it into an adorned program P with the aim of applying termination criteria to P rather than P. The transformation is sound in that if the adorned program satisfies a certain termination criterion, then the original program is finitely-ground. Importantly, applying termination criteria to adorned programs rather than the original ones strictly enlarges the class of programs recognized as finitely-ground.

Checking termination of bottom-up evaluation of logic programs with function symbols

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the bottom-up evaluation of the semantics of logic programs with complex terms. The presence of function symbols in the program may render the ground instantiation infinite, and finiteness of models and termination of the evaluation procedure, in the general case, are not guaranteed anymore. Since the program termination problem is undecidable in the general case, several decidable criteria (called program termination criteria) have been recently proposed. However, current conditions are not able to identify even simple programs, whose bottom-up execution always terminates. The paper introduces new decidable criteria for checking termination of logic programs with function symbols under bottom-up evaluation, by deeply analyzing the program structure. First, we analyze the propagation of complex terms among arguments by means of the extended version of the argument graph called propagation graph . The resulting criterion, called acyclicity , generalizes most of the decidable criteria proposed so far. Next, we study how rules may activate each other and define a more powerful criterion, called safety . This criterion uses the so-called safety function able to analyze how rules may activate each other and how the presence of some arguments in a rule limits its activation. We also study the application of the proposed criteria to bound queries and show that the safety criterion is well-suited to identify relevant classes of programs and bound queries. Finally, we propose a hierarchy of classes of terminating programs, called k-safety , where the k -safe class strictly includes the ( k -1)-safe class.

Checking Chase Termination: Cyclicity Analysis and Rewriting Techniques

The aim of this paper is to present more general criteria and techniques for chase termination. We first present extensions of the well-known stratification criterion and introduce a new criterion, called local stratification, which generalizes both super-weak acyclicity and stratification-based criteria (including the class of constraints which are inductively restricted). Next, the paper presents a rewriting algorithm transforming the original set of constraints Σ into an “equivalent” set Σα and verifying the structural properties for chase termination on Σα. The rewriting of constraints allows us to recognize larger classes of constraints for which chase termination is guaranteed. In particular, we show that if Σ satisfies chase termination conditions T, then the rewritten set Σα satisfies T as well, but the vice versa is not true, that is there are significant classes of constraints for which Σα satisfies T and Σ does not. A more general rewriting algorithm producing as output an equivalent set of dependencies and a Boolean value stating whether a sort of cyclicity has been detected is also proposed. The new rewriting technique and the checking of acyclicity allow us to introduce the class of acyclic constraints, which generalizes local stratification and guarantees that all chase sequences are finite with a length polynomial in the size of the input database.

Checking Termination of Logic Programs with Function Symbols through Linear Constraints

Enriching answer set programming with function symbols makes modeling easier, increases the expressive power, and allows us to deal with infinite domains. However, this comes at a cost: common inference tasks become undecidable. To cope with this issue, recent research has focused on finding trade-offs between expressivity and decidability by identifying classes of logic programs that impose limitations on the use of function symbols but guarantee decidability of common inference tasks. Despite the significant body of work in this area, current approaches do not include many simple practical programs whose evaluation terminates. In this paper, we present the novel class of rule-bounded programs. While current techniques perform a limited analysis of how terms are propagated from an individual argument to another, our technique is able to perform a more global analysis, thereby overcoming several limitations of current approaches. We also present a further class of cycle-bounded programs where groups of rules are analyzed together. We show different results on the correctness and the expressivity of the proposed techniques.

View updating through active integrity constraints

Current database systems are often large and complex and the case that a user or an application has full access to the entire database is rare. It is more likely to occur that access is granted via windows of the entire systems, called views. A view, usually virtual, is defined by giving a query on the whole database and at any point the content of the view is just the outcome of this query. Applications query a base relation or a view in the same way. Therefore, querying a view does not represent a serious conceptual problem. In contrast, the issue of view updating is problematic and of paramount importance: it refers to the problem of translating an update request against a view into an update request involving the base of data. Over the years, a substantial amount of research has been devoted to the various issues surrounding view updating and not surprisingly a wide selection of approaches to the view update problem has evolved. See [2,3] for surveys of methods for view updating.