Anytime Computation of Cautious Consequences in Answer Set Programming

TL;DR

This paper introduces anytime algorithms for computing cautious consequences in Answer Set Programming, enabling sound answers to be produced progressively during computation, addressing the high computational cost of traditional methods.

Contribution

It presents novel strategies and algorithms for incremental cautious consequence computation in ASP, allowing for early and sound results during the solving process.

Findings

Anytime algorithms produce sound cautious consequences during computation.

Strategies improve efficiency in computing cautious consequences.

Algorithms enable partial results before full computation is complete.

Abstract

Query answering in Answer Set Programming (ASP) is usually solved by computing (a subset of) the cautious consequences of a logic program. This task is computationally very hard, and there are programs for which computing cautious consequences is not viable in reasonable time. However, current ASP solvers produce the (whole) set of cautious consequences only at the end of their computation. This paper reports on strategies for computing cautious consequences, also introducing anytime algorithms able to produce sound answers during the computation.