Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) is a merger of two declarative paradigms: constraint solving and logic programming. Although a relatively new field, CLP has progressed in several quite different directions. In particular, the early fundamental concepts have been adapted to better serve in different areas of applications. In this survey of CLP, a primary goal is to give a systematic description of the major trends in terms of common fundamental concepts. The three main parts cover the theory, implementation issues, and programming for applications.

Annotated logics were introduced in [43] and later studied in [5, 7, 31, 32]. In [31], annotations were extended to allow variables and functions, and it was argued that such logics can be used to provide a formal semantics for rule-based expert systems with uncertainty. In this paper we continue to investigate the power of this approach. First, we introduce a new semantics for such programs based on ideals of lattices. Subsequently, some proposals for multivalued logic programming [5, 7, 32, 47, 40, 18] as well as some formalisms for temporal reasoning [1, 3, 42] are shown to fit into this framework. As an interesting by-product of this investigation, we obtain a new result concerning multivalued logic programming: a model theory for Fitting's bilattice-based logic programming, which until now has not been characterized model-theoretically. This is accompanied by a corresponding proof theory. 1 Introduction Large knowledge bases can be inconsistent in many ways. Nevertheless, certain...

Of all scientific investigations into reasoning with uncertainty and chance, probability theory is perhaps the best understood paradigm. Nevertheless, all studies conducted thus far into the semantics of quantitative logic programming (cf. van Emden [51], Fitting [18, 19, 20], Blair and Subrahmanian [5, 6, 49, 50], Kifer et al [29, 30, 31]) have restricted themselves to non-probabilistic semantical characterizations. In this paper, we take a few steps towards rectifying this situation. We define a logic programming language that is syntactically similar to the annotated logics of [5, 6], but in which the truth values are interpreted probabilistically. A probabilistic model theory and fixpoint theory is developed for such programs. This probabilistic model theory satisfies the requirements proposed by Fenstad [16] for a function to be called probabilistic. The logical treatment of probabilities is complicated by two facts: first, that the connectives cannot be interpreted truth function...

The variety of semantical approaches that have been invented for logic programs is quite broad, drawing on classical and many-valued logic, lattice theory, game theory, and topology. One source of this richness is the inherent non-monotonicity of its negation, something that does not have close parallels with the machinery of other programming paradigms. Nonetheless, much of the work on logic programming semantics seems to exist side by side with similar work done for imperative and functional programming, with relatively minimal contact between communities. In this paper we summarize one variety of approaches to the semantics of logic programs: that based on fixpoint theory. We do not attempt to cover much beyond this single area, which is already remarkably fruitful. We hope readers will see parallels with, and the divergences from the better known fixpoint treatments developed for other programming methodologies.

Logic programming provides a model for rule-based reasoning in expert systems. The advantage of this formal model is that it makes available many results from the semantics and proof theory of rst-order predicate logic.

The precise probability of a compound event (e.g. e1 e2 ; e1 e2) depends upon the known relationships (e.g. independence, mutual exclusion, ignorance of any relationship, etc.) between the primitive events that constitute the compound event. To date, most research on probabilistic logic programming [20, 19, 22, 23, 24] has assumed that we are ignorant of the relationship between primitive events. Likewise, most research in AI (e.g. Bayesian approaches) have assumed that primitive events are independent. In this paper, we propose a hybrid probabilistic logic programming language in which the user can explicitly associate, with any given probabilistic strategy, a conjunction and disjunction operator, and then write programs using these operators. We describe the syntax of hybrid probabilistic programs, and develop a model theory and fixpoint theory for such programs. Last, but not least, we develop three alternative procedures to answer queries, each of which is guaranteed to be sound ...

Numerous frameworks have been proposed in recent years for deductive databases with uncertainty. These frameworks differ in (i) their underlying notion of uncertainty, (ii) the way in which uncertainties are manipulated, and (iii) the way in which uncertainty is associated with the facts and rules of a program. On the basis of (iii), these frameworks can be classified into implication based (IB) and annotation based (AB) frameworks. In this paper, we develop a generic framework called the parametric framework as a unifying umbrella for IB frameworks. We develop the declarative, fixpoint, and proof-theoretic semantics of programs in the parametric framework and show their equivalence. Using this framework as a basis, we study the query optimization problem of containment of conjunctive queries in this framework, and establish necessary and sufficient conditions for containment for several classes of parametric conjunctive queries. Our results yield tools for use in the query optimization for large classes of query programs in IB deductive databases with uncertainty.

The past few years have witnessed an significant interest in probabilistic logic learning, i.e. in research lying at the intersection of probabilistic reasoning, logical representations, and machine learning. A rich variety of di#erent formalisms and learning techniques have been developed. This paper provides an introductory survey and overview of the stateof -the-art in probabilistic logic learning through the identification of a number of important probabilistic, logical and learning concepts.

Recent work on loglinear models in probabilistic constraint logic programming is applied to first-order probabilistic reasoning. Probabilities are defined directly on the proofs of atomic formulae, and by marginalisation on the atomic formulae themselves. We use Stochastic Logic Programs (SLPs) composed of labelled and unlabelled definite clauses to define the proof probabilities. We have a conservative extension of first-order reasoning, so that, for example, there is a one-one mapping between logical and random variables. We show how, in this framework, Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) can be used to induce the features of a loglinear model from data. We also compare the presented framework with other approaches to first-order probabilistic reasoning. Keywords: loglinear models, constraint logic programming, inductive logic programming 1 Introduction A framework which merges first-order logical and probabilistic inference in a theoretically sound and applicable manner promises ma...

In a previous work we have de ned Monotonic Logic Programs which extend definite logic programming to arbitrary complete lattices of truth-values with an appropriate notion of implication. We have shown elsewhere that this framework is general enough to capture Generalized Annotated Logic Programs, Probabilistic Deductive Databases, Possibilistic Logic Programming, Hybrid Probabilistic Logic Programs and Fuzzy Logic Programming [3, 4]. However, none of these semantics define a form of non-monotonic negation, which is fundamental for several knowledge representation applications. In the spirit of our previous work, we generalise our framework of Monotonic Logic Programs to allow for rules with arbitrary antitonic bodies over general complete lattices, of which normal programs are a special case. We then show that all the standard logic programming theoretical results carry over to Antitonic Logic Programs, defining Stable Model and Well-founded Model alike semantics.