Abstract
Intensional query answering aims at providing a response to a query addressed to a knowledge base by making use of the intensional knowledge as opposed to extensional. Such a response is an abstract description of the conventional answer that can be of interest in many situations, for example it may increase the cooperativeness of the system, or it may replace the conventional answer in case access to the extensional part of the knowledge base is costly as for Mobile Systems. In this paper we present a general framework to generate intensional answers in knowledge bases adhering to the logic programming paradigm. Such a framework is based on a program transformation technique, namely Partial Evaluation, and allows for generating complete and procedurally complete (wrt SLDNF-resolution) sets of intensional answers, treating both recursion and negation conveniently.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
C. Aravindan and P. M. Dung. Partial Deduction of Logic Programs wrt Well-Founded Semantics. New Generation Computing, 13(1):45–71, 1994.
K. Benkerimi and P. Hill. Supporting transformation for partial evaluation of logic programs. J. of Logic and Computation, 3(5):469–486, 1993.
K. Benkerimi and J. W. Lloyd. A partial evaluation procedure for logic programs. In Proc. of North American Conf. on Logic Programming, pages 343–358. MIT Press, 1990.
R. Bol. Loop checking in partial deduction. J. of Logic Programming 16(1–2):25–45, 1993.
D. Chan. Constructive negation based on the completed database. In Proc. of 5th International Conference and Symposium on Logic Programming, pages 111–125. MIT Press, 1988.
D. Chan. An extension of constructive negation and its application in coroutining. In Proc. of North American Conf. on Logic Programming, pages 477–493. MIT Press, 1989.
D. Chan and M. Wallace. A treatment of negation during partial evaluation. In Meta-Programming in Logic Programming (Proc. META'88), pages 299–317. MIT Press, 1989.
L. Cholvy and R. Demolombe. Querying a rule base. In Proc. 1st Int. Conf. on Expert Database Systems, pages 365–371, 1986.
W. W. Chu, Q. Chen, and R.-C. Lee. A pattern-based approach for deriving approximate and intensional answers. In Proc. of the 1st Int. Work. on Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems, pages 262–265. IEEE Comput. Soc. Press, 1991.
W. W. Chu, R.-C. Lee, and Q. Chen. Using type inference and induced rules to provide intensional answers. In Proc. of IEEE Int. Conf. on Data Engineering, 1991.
K. L. Clark. Negation as failure. In Logic and Data Bases, pages 293–322. Plenum Press, 1978.
F. Corella. Semantic retrieval and levels of abstraction. In Proc. 1st Int. Workshop on Expert Database Systems, pages 397–420, 1984.
F. Cuppens and R. Demolombe. Cooperative answering: a methodology to provide intelligent access to databases. In Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Expert Database Systems, pages 333–353, 1988.
G. De Giacomo. Intensional query answering: an application of partial evaluation. In Logic Program Synthesis and Transformation (Proc. of LOPSTR'92), pages 132–150. Springer-Verlag, 1993.
R. Demolombe. A strategy for the computation of conditional answers. In Proc. of the 10th Europ. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, 1992.
R. Demolombe and T. Imielinski, editors. Nonstandard Queries and Nonstandard Answers. Studies in Logic and Computation, Oxford Science Publications, 1994.
D. A. De Waal. The power of partial evaluation. In Logic Program Synthesis and Transformation (Proc. of LOPSTR'93), pages 159–161. Springer-Verlag, 1994.
W. Drabent. What's failure? An approach to constructive negation. Acta Informatica, 5(1):27–60, 1995.
M. M. Fonkam. Employing integrity constraints for query modification and intensional answer generation in multi-database systems. In Advances in Database Systems (Proc. of the 10th British Nat. Conf. on Databases), pages 244–260. Springer-Verlag, 1992.
T. Imielinski. Intelligent query answering in rule based systems. J. of Logic Programming, 4(3):229–257, 1987.
T. Imielinski and B. R. Badrinath. Data management for mobile computing. SIGMOD RECORD, 22(1):34–39, 1993.
K. Inoue. Extending logic programs with fefault assumptions. In Proc. of the 8th Int. Conf. on Logic Programming, pages 492–504, 1991.
K. Inoue. Linear resolution for consequence finding. Artificial Intelligence, 56:301–353, 1992.
Y. H. Kim and H.-Y. Kim. Applying intensional query processing techniques to object-oriented database systems. In Proc. of the 3rd Int. Sym. on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, pages 405–412. World Scientific, 1993.
H. J. Komorowski. A specification of an abstract prolog machine and its application to partial evaluation. Technical Report LSST 69, Linköping University, 1981.
H. J. Komorowski. An introduction to partial deduction. In Proc. of the 3rd Int. Work. of Meta-Programming in Logic (META'92), pages 49–69. Springer-Verlag, 1992.
J. W. Lloyd. Foundations of Logic Programming (2nd edition). Springer-Verlag, 1987.
J. W. Lloyd and J. C. Shepherdson. Partial evaluation in logic programming. J. of Logic Programming, 11(3&4): 217–242, 1991.
J. W. Lloyd and R. W. Topor. Making prolog more expressive. J. of Logic Programming, 1(3):225–240, 1984.
B. Martens, D. De Schreye, and M. Bruynooghe. Sound and complete partial deduction with unfolding based on well-founded measures. In Proc. of the International Conference on Fifth Generation Computer Systems, pages 473–480, 1992.
B. Martens, D. De Schreye, and T. Horváth. Sound and complete partial deduction with unfolding based on well-founded measures. Theoretical Computer Science, 122(1–2):97–117, 1994.
A. Motro. Using integrity constraints to provide intensional answers to relational queries. In Proc. 15th Int. Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 237–246, 1989.
A. Motro. Intensional answers to database queries. Technical report, Department of Information and Software Systems Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 1991.
A. Motro. Responding with knowledge. In Advances in Databases and Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1: The Landscape of Intelligence in Database and Information Systems. JAI Press, 1993.
A. Motro and Q. Yuan. Querying database knowledge. In Proc. of ACM SIGMOD-90, pages 173–183, 1990.
A. Pirotte and D. Roelantes. Constrainst for improving the generation of intesional answers in a deductive database. In Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Data Engineering, pages 652–659, 1989.
A. Pirotte, D. Roelantes, and E. Zimanyi. Controlled generation of intensional answers. IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 3(2): 221–236, 1991.
G. D. Plotkin. A note on inductive generalization. In Machine Intelligence, Vol. 5. University Press, 1969.
T. C. Przymusinski. On constructive negation in logic programming. In Proc. of North American Conf. on Logic Programming, pages 1–19 (addendum). MIT Press, 1989.
J. C. Reynolds. Transformational systems and algebraic structure of atomic formulas. In Machine Intelligence, Vol. 5. Edinburgh University Press, 1969.
J. C. Shepherdson. Negation as failure: a comparison of Clark's completed data base and Reiter's closed world assumption. J. of Logic Programming, 1(1):51–81, 1984.
C. Shum and R. Muntz. Implicit representation for extensional answers. In Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Expert Database Systems, pages 257–273, 1988.
I.-Y. Song, H.-Y. Kim, and P. Geutner. Intensional query processing: a three-step approach. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pages 542–549. Springer-Verlag, 1990.
F. Van Harmelen. The limitations of partial evaluation. In Logic-Based Knowledge Representation, pages 87–111. MIT Press, 1989.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
de Giacomo, G. Intensional query answering by partial evaluation. J Intell Inf Syst 7, 205–233 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125368
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125368