Methods and Methodologies for Developing Answer-Set Programs

01.09.2009 - 31.08.2013
Research funding project
Answer-set programming (ASP) is an important formalism for declarative problem solving and nonmonotonic reasoning, having a model-oriented view for knowledge representation, i.e. models constitute answers to problems rather than proofs as in traditional logic-based approaches. Although different realizations of the ASP paradigm exist, it is usually identified with logic programming under the answer-set semantics, which we shall deal with in this project. The high relevance of this particular formalism lies not only in its intuitive character but is also due to the availability of sophisticated solvers, which lead to successful applications in diverse areas like diagnosis, planning, database repair, and Semantic-Web reasoning. However, a main obstacle for a wider acceptance of ASP is a lack of techniques for supporting the development of answer-set programs. Indeed, the need for tools, methods, and methodologies that ease the programming process has been clearly recognized in the ASP community, but, except for some preliminary work, no systematic study in this direction has been put forth so far. in this project, we address this challenging issue by providing adequate principles and techniques that are aimed to support the answer-set programmer during development. Generally, the focus of our research will be on methodologies for systematic program development, program testing, and debugging. In particular, in working on these areas, special emphasis will be given to modular programming concepts and to the ability of the developed techniques to respect the declarative nature of ASP. To support a sufficient level of applicability, we plan to offer solutions not only for the core language of ASP but also for important extensions thereof that are commonly used and realized in various answer-set solvers. Moreover, we will consider complexity and decidability issues for the identifies methods whenever relevant and provide restricted techniques and approximations where needed. The methods resulting from the project should be incorporated in an integrated development environment for ASP that combines straightforward as well as advanced techniques for a declarative language. The availability of intelligent development methodologies and tools will have a major impact on the field of ASP as a whole, significantly advancing the state of the art. Furthermore, with such techniques at hand, both expert as well as novice programmers will have an enhanced access to powerful declarative problem-solving machineries.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Grant funds

  • FWF - Österr. Wissenschaftsfonds (National) Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Research focus

  • Computational Intelligence: 100%

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Answer-Set ProgrammierungAnswer-Set Programming
Software EntwicklungSoftware Developement
Nichtmonotone Logik-ProgrammierungNonmonotonic Logic-Programming
WissensrepräsentationKnowledge Representation
Deklaratives ProblemloesenDeclarative Problem Solving

Publications