Direct Encoding of Declare Constraints in ASP

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for encoding Declare constraints directly in ASP, simplifying the modeling process and improving efficiency in Process Mining applications.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel direct encoding approach for Declare constraints in ASP, removing the need for intermediate automaton representations.

Findings

Improved performance in Process Mining tasks using the new encoding.

Effective comparison showing advantages over traditional ASP encodings.

Demonstrated applicability in real-world Process Mining scenarios.

Abstract

Answer Set Programming (ASP), a well-known declarative logic programming paradigm, has recently found practical application in Process Mining. In particular, ASP has been used to model tasks involving declarative specifications of business processes. In this area, Declare stands out as the most widely adopted declarative process modeling language, offering a means to model processes through sets of constraints valid traces must satisfy, that can be expressed in Linear Temporal Logic over Finite Traces (LTLf). Existing ASP-based solutions encode Declare constraints by modeling the corresponding LTLf formula or its equivalent automaton which can be obtained using established techniques. In this paper, we introduce a novel encoding for Declare constraints that directly models their semantics as ASP rules, eliminating the need for intermediate representations. We assess the effectiveness of this novel approach on two Process Mining tasks by comparing it with alternative ASP encodings and a Python library for Declare. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).