$\lambda$Prolog is known to be well-suited for expressing and implementing logics and inference systems. We show that lemmas and definitions in such logics can be implemented with a great economy of expression. We encode a higher-order logic using an encoding that maps both terms and types of the object logic (higher-order logic) to terms of the metalanguage ($\lambda$Prolog). We discuss both the Terzo and Teyjus implementations of $\lambda$Prolog. We also encode the same logic in Twelf and compare the features of these two metalanguages for our purposes.

The past decade has seen dramatic growth in the application of model checking techniques to the validation and verification of correctness properties of hardware, and more recently software systems. Recently, there has been increasing interest in applying logic programming techniques to model checking in particular and verification in general. For example, table-based logic programming can be used as an efficient means of performing explicit model checking. Other research has successfully exploited set-based logic program analysis, constraint logic programming, and logic program transformation techniques to verify systems.

Abductive logic programming offers a formalism to declaratively express and solve problems in areas such as diagnosis, planning, belief revision and hypothetical reasoning. Tabled logic programming offers a computational mechanism that provides a level of declarativity superior to that of Prolog, and which has supported successful applications in fields such as parsing, program analysis, and model checking. In this paper we show how to use tabled logic programming to evaluate queries to abductive frameworks with integrity constraints when these frameworks contain both default and explicit negation. The result is the ability to compute abduction over well-founded semantics with explicit negation and answer sets. Our approach consists of a transformation and an evaluation method. The transformation adjoins to each objective literal $O$ in a program, an objective literal $\hbox{\it not}(O)$ along with rules that ensure that $\hbox{\it not}(O)$ will be true if and only if $O$ is false. We call the resulting program a dual program. The evaluation method, ABDUAL, then operates on the dual program. ABDUAL is sound and complete for evaluating queries to abductive frameworks whose entailment method is based on either the well-founded semantics with explicit negation, or on answer sets. Further, ABDUAL is asymptotically as efficient as any known method for either class of problems. In addition, when abduction is not desired, ABDUAL operating on a dual program provides a novel tabling method for evaluating queries to ground extended programs whose complexity and termination properties are similar to those of the best tabling methods for the well-founded semantics. A publicly available meta-interpreter has been developed for ABDUAL using the XSB system.

We define XPathLog as a Datalog-style extension of XPath. XPathLog provides a clear, declarative language for querying and manipulating XML whose perspectives are especially in XML data integration. In our characterization, the formal semantics is defined wrt. an edge-labeled graph-based model, which covers the XML data model. We give a complete, logic-based characterization of XML data and the main language concept for XML, XPath. XPath-Logic extends the XPath language with variable bindings and embeds it into first-order logic. XPathLog is then the Horn fragment of XPath-Logic, providing a Datalog-style, rule-based language for querying and manipulating XML data. The model-theoretic semantics of XPath-Logic serves as the base of XPathLog as a logic-programming language, whereas also an equivalent answer-set semantics for evaluating XPathLog queries is given. In contrast to other approaches, the XPath syntax and semantics is also used for a declarative specification how the database should be updated: when used in rule heads, XPath filters are interpreted as specifications of elements and properties which should be added to the database.

It is well known that freeness and linearity information positively interact with aliasing information, allowing both the precision and the efficiency of the sharing analysis of logic programs to be improved. In this paper, we present a novel combination of set-sharing with freeness and linearity information, which is characterized by an improved abstract unification operator. We provide a new abstraction function and prove the correctness of the analysis for both the finite tree and the rational tree cases. Moreover, we show that the same notion of redundant information as identified in Bagnara et al. (2000) and Zaffanella et al. (2002) also applies to this abstract domain combination: this allows for the implementation of an abstract unification operator running in polynomial time and achieving the same precision on all the considered observable properties.

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are $\textsf{ConGolog}$, $\textsf{AGENT-0}$, the $\textsf{IMPACT}$ agent programming language, $\textsf{DyLOG}$, Concurrent $\textsf{METATEM}$ and ${\cal E}_{hhf}$. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.

Security protocols stipulate how the remote principals of a computer network should interact in order to obtain specific security goals. The crucial goals of confidentiality and authentication may be achieved in various forms, each of different strength. Using soft (rather than crisp) constraints, we develop a uniform formal notion for the two goals. They are no longer formalised as mere yes/no properties as in the existing literature, but gain an extra parameter, the security level. For example, different messages can enjoy different levels of confidentiality, or a principal can achieve different levels of authentication with different principals. The goals are formalised within a general framework for protocol analysis that is amenable to mechanisation by model checking. Following the application of the framework to analysing the asymmetric Needham-Schroeder protocol (Bella and Bistarelli 2001; Bella and Bistarelli 2002), we have recently discovered a new attack on that protocol as a form of retaliation by principals who have been attacked previously. Having commented on that attack, we then demonstrate the framework on a bigger, largely deployed protocol consisting of three phases, Kerberos.

How to extract negative information from programs is an important issue in logic programming. Here we address the problem for functional logic programs, from a proof-theoretic perspective. The starting point of our work is CRWL (Constructor based ReWriting Logic), a well established theoretical framework for functional logic programming, whose fundamental notion is that of non-strict non-deterministic function. We present a proof calculus, CRWLF, which is able to deduce negative information from CRWL-programs. In particular, CRWLF is able to prove ‘finite’ failure of reduction within CRWL.

We present some applications of intermediate logics in the field of Answer Set Programming (ASP). A brief, but comprehensive introduction to the answer set semantics, intuitionistic and other intermediate logics is given. Some equivalence notions and their applications are discussed. Some results on intermediate logics are shown, and applied later to prove properties of answer sets. A characterization of answer sets for logic programs with nested expressions is provided in terms of intuitionistic provability, generalizing a recent result given by Pearce. It is known that the answer set semantics for logic programs with nested expressions may select non-minimal models. Minimal models can be very important in some applications, therefore we studied them; in particular we obtain a characterization, in terms of intuitionistic logic, of answer sets which are also minimal models. We show that the logic G3 characterizes the notion of strong equivalence between programs under the semantic induced by these models. Finally we discuss possible applications and consequences of our results. They clearly state interesting links between ASP and intermediate logics, which might bring research in these two areas together.

In this paper, we propose a variant of stable model semantics for disjunctive logic programming and deductive databases. The semantics, called minimal founded, generalizes stable model semantics for normal (i.e. non-disjunctive) programs, but differs from disjunctive stable model semantics (the extension of stable model semantics for disjunctive programs). Compared with disjunctive stable model semantics, minimal founded semantics seems to be more intuitive, it gives meaning to programs which are meaningless under stable model semantics and is no harder to compute. More specifically, minimal founded semantics differs from stable model semantics only for disjunctive programs having constraint rules or rules working as constraints. We study the expressive power of the semantics, and show that for general disjunctive datalog programs it has the same power as disjunctive stable model semantics.

The overall goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical foundations of algorithmic verification techniques for first order linear logic specifications. The fragment of linear logic we consider in this paper is based on the linear logic programming language called LO (Andreoli and Pareschi, 1990) enriched with universally quantified goal formulas. Although LO was originally introduced as a theoretical foundation for extensions of logic programming languages, it can also be viewed as a very general language to specify a wide range of infinite-state concurrent systems (Andreoli, 1992; Cervesato, 1995). Our approach is based on the relation between backward reachability and provability highlighted in our previous work on propositional LO programs (Bozzano et al., 2002). Following this line of research, we define here a general framework for the bottom-up. evaluation of first order linear logic specifications. The evaluation procedure is based on an effective fixpoint operator working on a symbolic representation of infinite collections of first order linear logic formulas. The theory of well quasi-orderings Abdulla et al., 1996; Finkel and Schnoebelen, 2001) can be used to provide sufficient conditions for the termination of the evaluation of non trivial fragments of first order linear logic.

We consider a simple extension of logic programming where variables may range over goals and goals may be arguments of predicates. In this language we can write logic programs which use goals as data. We give practical evidence that, by exploiting this capability when transforming programs, we can improve program efficiency. We propose a set of program transformation rules which extend the familiar unfolding and folding rules and allow us to manipulate clauses with goals which occur as arguments of predicates. In order to prove the correctness of these transformation rules, we formally define the operational semantics of our extended logic programming language. This semantics is a simple variant of LD-resolution. When suitable conditions are satisfied this semantics agrees with LD-resolution and, thus, the programs written in our extended language can be run by ordinary Prolog systems. Our transformation rules are shown to preserve the operational semantics and termination.

Binary logic programs can be obtained from ordinary logic programs by a binarizing transformation. In most cases, binary programs obtained this way are less efficient than the original programs. (Demoen, 1992) showed an interesting example of a logic program whose computational behaviour was improved when it was transformed to a binary program and then specialized by partial deduction. The class of B-stratifiable logic programs is defined. It is shown that for every B-stratifiable logic program, binarization and subsequent partial deduction produce a binary program which does not contain variables for continuations introduced by binarization. Such programs usually have a better computational behaviour than the original ones. Both binarization and partial deduction can be easily automated. A comparison with other related approaches to program transformation is given.

The ability of providing and relating temporal representations at different ‘grain levels’ of the same reality is an important research theme in computer science and a major requirement for many applications, including formal specification and verification, temporal databases, data mining, problem solving, and natural language understanding. In particular, the addition of a granularity dimension to a temporal logic makes it possible to specify in a concise way reactive systems whose behaviour can be naturally modeled with respect to a (possibly infinite) set of differently-grained temporal domains. Suitable extensions of the monadic second-order theory of $k$ successors have been proposed in the literature to capture the notion of time granularity. In this paper, we provide the monadic second-order theories of downward unbounded layered structures, which are infinitely refinable structures consisting of a coarsest domain and an infinite number of finer and finer domains, and of upward unbounded layered structures, which consist of a finest domain and an infinite number of coarser and coarser domains, with expressively complete and elementarily decidable temporal logic counterparts. We obtain such a result in two steps. First, we define a new class of combined automata, called temporalized automata, which can be proved to be the automata-theoretic counterpart of temporalized logics, and show that relevant properties, such as closure under Boolean operations, decidability, and expressive equivalence with respect to temporal logics, transfer from component automata to temporalized ones. Then, we exploit the correspondence between temporalized logics and automata to reduce the task of finding the temporal logic counterparts of the given theories of time granularity to the easier one of finding temporalized automata counterparts of them.

The work reported here introduces Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP), a formalism that combines results of Logic Programming and Defeasible Argumentation. DeLP provides the possibility of representing information in the form of weak rules in a declarative manner, and a defeasible argumentation inference mechanism for warranting the entailed conclusions. In DeLP an argumentation formalism will be used for deciding between contradictory goals. Queries will be supported by arguments that could be defeated by other arguments. A query $q$ will succeed when there is an argument ${\mathcal A}$ for $q$ that is warranted, i.e. the argument ${\mathcal A}$ that supports $q$ is found undefeated by a warrant procedure that implements a dialectical analysis. The defeasible argumentation basis of DeLP allows to build applications that deal with incomplete and contradictory information in dynamic domains. Thus, the resulting approach is suitable for representing agent's knowledge and for providing an argumentation based reasoning mechanism to agents.

This paper illustrates how a Prolog program, using chronological backtracking to find a solution in some search space, can be enhanced to perform intelligent backtracking. The enhancement crucially relies on the impurity of Prolog that allows a program to store information when a dead end is reached. To illustrate the technique, a simple search program is enhanced.

The so called “cogen approach” to program specialisation, writing a compiler generator instead of a specialiser, has been used with considerable success in partial evaluation of both functional and imperative languages. This paper demonstrates that the cogen approach is also applicable to the specialisation of logic programs (called partial deduction) and leads to effective specialisers. Moreover, using good binding-time annotations, the speed-ups of the specialised programs are comparable to the speed-ups obtained with online specialisers. The paper first develops a generic approach to offline partial deduction and then a specific offline partial deduction method, leading to the offline system LIX for pure logic programs. While this is a usable specialiser by itself, it is used to develop the cogen system LOGEN. Given a program, a specification of what inputs will be static, and an annotation specifying which calls should be unfolded, LOGEN generates a specialised specialiser for the program at hand. Running this specialiser with particular values for the static inputs results in the specialised program. While this requires two steps instead of one, the efficiency of the specialisation process is improved in situations where the same program is specialised multiple times. The paper also presents and evaluates an automatic binding-time analysis that is able to derive the annotations. While the derived annotations are still suboptimal compared to hand-crafted ones, they enable non-expert users to use the LOGEN system in a fully automated way. Finally, LOGEN is extended so as to directly support a large part of Prolog's declarative and non-declarative features and so as to be able to perform so called mixline specialisations.

A system is data-independent with respect to a data type $X$ iff the operations it can perform on values of type $X$ are restricted to just equality testing. The system may also store, input and output values of type $X$. We study model checking of systems which are data-independent with respect to two distinct type variables $X$ and $Y$, and may in addition use arrays with indices from $X$ and values from $Y$. Our main interest is the following parameterised model-checking problem: whether a given program satisfies a given temporal-logic formula for all non-empty finite instances of $X$ and $Y$. Initially, we consider instead the abstraction where $X$ and $Y$ are infinite and where partial functions with finite domains are used to model arrays. Using a translation to data-independent systems without arrays, we show that the $\mu$-calculus model-checking problem is decidable for these systems. From this result, we can deduce properties of all systems with finite instances of $X$ and $Y$. We show that there is a procedure for the above parameterised model-checking problem of the universal fragment of the $\mu$-calculus, such that it always terminates but may give false negatives. We also deduce that the parameterised model-checking problem of the universal disjunction-free fragment of the $\mu$-calculus is decidable. Practical motivations for model checking data-independent systems with arrays include verification of memory and cache systems, where $X$ is the type of memory addresses, and $Y$ the type of storable values. As an example we verify a fault-tolerant memory interface over a set of unreliable memories.