scholarly journals Lazy-Grounding for Answer Set Programs with External Source Access

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Eiter ◽  
Tobias Kaminski ◽  
Antonius Weinzierl
Keyword(s):  
Efficient Solution ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
External Source ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
Input Program ◽  
Evaluation Algorithm ◽  
External Sources ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Answer Set

HEX-programs enrich the well-known Answer Set Programming (ASP) paradigm. In HEX, problems are solved using nonmonotonic logic programs with bidirectional access to external sources. ASP evaluation is traditionally based on grounding the input program first, but recent advances in lazy-grounding make the latter also interesting for HEX, as the grounding bottleneck of ASP may be avoided. We explore this issue and present a new evaluation algorithm for HEX-programs based on lazy-grounding solving for ASP. Nonmonotonic dependencies and value invention (i.e., import of new constants) from external sources make an efficient solution nontrivial. However, illustrative benchmarks show a clear advantage of the new algorithm for grounding-intense programs, which is a new perspective to make HEX more suitable for real-world application needs.

scholarly journals A model building framework for answer set programming with external computations

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS EITER ◽  
MICHAEL FINK ◽  
GIOVAMBATTISTA IANNI ◽  
THOMAS KRENNWALLNER ◽  
CHRISTOPH REDL ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Model Building ◽  
External Source ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Evaluation Approach ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Model Graph ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractAs software systems are getting increasingly connected, there is a need for equipping nonmonotonic logic programs with access to external sources that are possibly remote and may contain information in heterogeneous formats. To cater for this need,hexprograms were designed as a generalization of answer set programs with an API style interface that allows to access arbitrary external sources, providing great flexibility. Efficient evaluation of such programs however is challenging, and it requires to interleave external computation and model building; to decide when to switch between these tasks is difficult, and existing approaches have limited scalability in many real-world application scenarios. We present a new approach for the evaluation of logic programs with external source access, which is based on a configurable framework for dividing the non-ground program into possibly overlapping smaller parts called evaluation units. The latter will be processed by interleaving external evaluation and model building using an evaluation graph and a model graph, respectively, and by combining intermediate results. Experiments with our prototype implementation show a significant improvement compared to previous approaches. While designed forhex-programs, the new evaluation approach may be deployed to related rule-based formalisms as well.

scholarly journals Exploiting Answer Set Programming with External Sources for Meta-Interpretive Learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 571-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOBIAS KAMINSKI ◽  
THOMAS EITER ◽  
KATSUMI INOUE
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evaluation ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Combinatorial Search ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Search Problems ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Performance Gains ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractMeta-Interpretive Learning (MIL) learns logic programs from examples by instantiating meta-rules, which is implemented by the Metagol system based on Prolog. Viewing MIL-problems as combinatorial search problems, they can alternatively be solved by employing Answer Set Programming (ASP), which may result in performance gains as a result of efficient conflict propagation. However, a straightforward ASP-encoding of MIL results in a huge search space due to a lack of procedural bias and the need for grounding. To address these challenging issues, we encode MIL in the HEX-formalism, which is an extension of ASP that allows us to outsource the background knowledge, and we restrict the search space to compensate for a procedural bias in ASP. This way, the import of constants from the background knowledge can for a given type of meta-rules be limited to relevant ones. Moreover, by abstracting from term manipulations in the encoding and by exploiting the HEX interface mechanism, the import of such constants can be entirely avoided in order to mitigate the grounding bottleneck. An experimental evaluation shows promising results.

scholarly journals Inlining External Sources in Answer Set Programs

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-411
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH REDL
Keyword(s):  
External Source ◽  
Performance Gain ◽  
Alternative Evaluation ◽  
Performance Improvements ◽  
Evaluation Approach ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Evaluation Algorithm ◽  
Significant Performance ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Answer Set

Abstracthex-programs are an extension of answer set programs (ASP) with external sources. To this end, external atoms provide a bidirectional interface between the program and an external source. The traditional evaluation algorithm for hex-programs is based on guessing truth values of external atoms and verifying them by explicit calls of the external source. The approach was optimized by techniques that reduce the number of necessary verification calls or speed them up, but the remaining external calls are still expensive. In this paper, we present an alternative evaluation approach based on inlining of external atoms, motivated by existing but less general approaches for specialized formalisms such as DL-programs. External atoms are then compiled away such that no verification calls are necessary. The approach is implemented in the dlvhex reasoner. Experiments show a significant performance gain. Besides performance improvements, we further exploit inlining for extending previous (semantic) characterizations of program equivalence from ASP to hex-programs, including those of strong equivalence, uniform equivalence, and $\langle\mathcal{H},\mathcal{B}\rangle$- equivalence. Finally, based on these equivalence criteria, we characterize also inconsistency of programs w.r.t. extensions. Since well-known ASP extensions (such as constraint ASP) are special cases of hex, the results are interesting beyond the particular formalism.

scholarly journals Conflict-driven ASP solving with external sources

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 659-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS EITER ◽  
MICHAEL FINK ◽  
THOMAS KRENNWALLNER ◽  
CHRISTOPH REDL
Keyword(s):  
Description Logic ◽  
Logic Program ◽  
External Source ◽  
External Information ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Bidirectional Communication ◽  
Meta Information ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractAnswer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-known problem solving approach based on nonmonotonic logic programs and efficient solvers. To enable access to external information,hex-programs extend programs withexternal atoms, which allow for a bidirectional communication between the logic program and external sources of computation (e.g., description logic reasoners and Web resources). Current solvers evaluatehex-programs by a translation to ASP itself, in which values of external atoms are guessed and verified after the ordinary answer set computation. This elegant approach does not scale with the number of external accesses in general, in particular in presence of nondeterminism (which is instrumental for ASP). In this paper, we present a novel, native algorithm for evaluatinghex-programs which uses learning techniques. In particular, we extend conflict-driven ASP solving techniques, which prevent the solver from running into the same conflict again, from ordinary tohex-programs. We show how to gain additional knowledge from external source evaluations and how to use it in a conflict-driven algorithm. We first target the uninformed case, i.e., when we have no extra information on external sources, and then extend our approach to the case where additional meta-information is available. Experiments show that learning from external sources can significantly decrease both the runtime and the number of considered candidate compatible sets.

scholarly journals Query Answering with Guarded Existential Rules under Stable Model Semantics

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (03) ◽  
pp. 3017-3024
Author(s):  
Hai Wan ◽  
Guohui Xiao ◽  
Chenglin Wang ◽  
Xianqiao Liu ◽  
Junhong Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Query Answering ◽  
Prototype System ◽  
Stable Model ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Termination Problem ◽  
Answer Set

In this paper, we study the problem of query answering with guarded existential rules (also called GNTGDs) under stable model semantics. Our goal is to use existing answer set programming (ASP) solvers. However, ASP solvers handle only finitely-ground logic programs while the program translated from GNTGDs by Skolemization is not in general. To address this challenge, we introduce two novel notions of (1) guarded instantiation forest to describe the instantiation of GNTGDs and (2) prime block to characterize the repeated infinitely-ground program translated from GNTGDs. Using these notions, we prove that the ground termination problem for GNTGDs is decidable. We also devise an algorithm for query answering with GNTGDs using ASP solvers. We have implemented our approach in a prototype system. The evaluation over a set of benchmarks shows encouraging results.

scholarly journals Partial Compilation of ASP Programs

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 857-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARDO CUTERI ◽  
CARMINE DODARO ◽  
FRANCESCO RICCA ◽  
PETER SCHÜLLER
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Analysis ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Blow Up ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Combinatorial Problems ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Input Program ◽  
Evaluation Algorithm

AbstractAnswer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-known declarative formalism in logic programming. Efficient implementations made it possible to apply ASP in many scenarios, ranging from deductive databases applications to the solution of hard combinatorial problems. State-of-the-art ASP systems are based on the traditional ground&solve approach and are general-purpose implementations, i.e., they are essentially built once for any kind of input program. In this paper, we propose an extended architecture for ASP systems, in which parts of the input program are compiled into an ad-hoc evaluation algorithm (i.e., we obtain a specific binary for a given program), and might not be subject to the grounding step. To this end, we identify a condition that allows the compilation of a sub-program, and present the related partial compilation technique. Importantly, we have implemented the new approach on top of a well-known ASP solver and conducted an experimental analysis on publicly-available benchmarks. Results show that our compilation-based approach improves on the state of the art in various scenarios, including cases in which the input program is stratified or the grounding blow-up makes the evaluation unpractical with traditional ASP systems.

scholarly journals onlineSPARC: A Programming Environment for Answer Set Programming

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIAS MARCOPOULOS ◽  
YUANLIN ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Logic Programming ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Programming Environment ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
School Students ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
Simple Interface ◽  
Answer Sets ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractRecent progress in logic programming (e.g. the development of the answer set programming (ASP) paradigm) has made it possible to teach it to general undergraduate and even middle/high school students. Given the limited exposure of these students to computer science, the complexity of downloading, installing, and using tools for writing logic programs could be a major barrier for logic programming to reach a much wider audience. We developed onlineSPARC, an online ASP environment with a self-contained file system and a simple interface. It allows users to type/edit logic programs and perform several tasks over programs, including asking a query to a program, getting the answer sets of a program, and producing a drawing/animation based on the answer sets of a program.

scholarly journals A decidable subclass of finitary programs

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 481-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
SABRINA BASELICE ◽  
PIERO A. BONATTI
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Stable Model ◽  
Unique Combination ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Full Support ◽  
Odd Cycles ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractAnswer set programming—the most popular problem solving paradigm based on logic programs—has been recently extended to support uninterpreted function symbols (Syrjänen 2001, Bonatti 2004; Simkus and Eiter 2007; Gebseret al. 2007; Baseliceet al. 2009; Calimeriet al. 2008). All of these approaches have some limitation. In this paper we propose a class of programs called FP2 that enjoys a different trade-off between expressiveness and complexity. FP2 is inspired by the extension of finitary normal programs with local variables introduced in (Bonatti 2004, Section 5). FP2 programs enjoy the following unique combination of properties: (i) the ability of expressing predicates with infinite extensions; (ii) full support for predicates with arbitrary arity; (iii) decidability of FP2 membership checking; (iv) decidability of skeptical and credulous stable model reasoning for call-safe queries. Odd cycles are supported by composing FP2 programs with argument restricted programs.

scholarly journals Reasoning with Forest Logic Programs and f-hybrid knowledge bases

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-463
Author(s):  
CRISTINA FEIER ◽  
STIJN HEYMANS
Keyword(s):  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Logic Programs ◽  
Decidability Result ◽  
Tree Shape ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Hybrid Framework ◽  
Hybrid Knowledge ◽  
Satisfiability Checking ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractOpen Answer Set Programming (OASP) is an undecidable framework for integrating ontologies and rules. Although several decidable fragments of OASP have been identified, few reasoning procedures exist. In this paper, we provide a sound, complete, and terminating algorithm for satisfiability checking w.r.t. Forest Logic Programs (FoLPs), a fragment of OASP where rules have a tree shape and allow for inequality atoms and constants. The algorithm establishes a decidability result for FoLPs. Although believed to be decidable, so far only the decidability for two small subsets of FoLPs, local FoLPs and acyclic FoLPs, has been shown. We further introduce f-hybrid knowledge bases, a hybrid framework where knowledge bases and FoLPs coexist, and we show that reasoning with such knowledge bases can be reduced to reasoning with FoLPs only. We note that f-hybrid knowledge bases do not require the usual (weakly) DL-safety of the rule component, thus providing a genuine alternative approach to current integration approaches of ontologies and rules.

scholarly journals Thedlvhexsystem for knowledge representation: recent advances (system description)

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 866-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH REDL
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Representation ◽  
Real World ◽  
Answer Set Programming ◽  
Current Status ◽  
System Description ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Answer Set

AbstractThedlvhexsystem implements thehex-semantics, which integrates answer set programming (ASP) with arbitrary external sources. Since its first release ten years ago, significant advancements were achieved. Most importantly, the exploitation of properties of external sources led to efficiency improvements and flexibility enhancements of the language, and technical improvements on the system side increased user's convenience. In this paper, we present the current status of the system and point out the most important recent enhancements over early versions. While existing literature focuses on theoretical aspects and specific components, a bird's eye view of the overall system is missing. In order to promote the system for real-world applications, we further present applications which were already successfully realized on top ofdlvhex.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document