Computing only minimal answers in disjunctive deductive databases

TL;DR

This paper introduces a complete and non-redundant method for computing minimal answers in disjunctive deductive databases under stable model semantics, improving efficiency and applicability.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach for computing minimal answers that avoids redundancy and can be optimized for stratified databases and other semantics.

Findings

Method is complete and non-redundant

Does not require full model computation for stratified databases

Uses compilation to improve efficiency and handle non-existence of models

Abstract

A method is presented for computing minimal answers in disjunctive deductive databases under the disjunctive stable model semantics. Such answers are constructed by repeatedly extending partial answers. Our method is complete (in that every minimal answer can be computed) and does not admit redundancy (in the sense that every partial answer generated can be extended to a minimal answer), whence no non-minimal answer is generated. For stratified databases, the method does not (necessarily) require the computation of models of the database in their entirety. Compilation is proposed as a tool by which problems relating to computational efficiency and the non-existence of disjunctive stable models can be overcome. The extension of our method to other semantics is also considered.