Abstract:We explore the use of answer set programming (ASP) and its extension with quantifiers, ASP(Q), for inconsistency-tolerant querying of prioritized data, where a priority relation between conflicting facts is exploited to define three notions of optimal repairs (Pareto-, globally- and completion-optimal). We consider the variants of three well-known semantics (AR, brave and IAR) that use these optimal repairs, and for which query answering is in the first or second level of the polynomial hierarchy for a large class of logical theories. Notably, this paper presents the first implementation of globally-optimal repair-based semantics, as well as the first implementation of the grounded semantics, which is a tractable under-approximation of all these optimal repair-based semantics. Our experimental evaluation sheds light on the feasibility of computing answers under globally-optimal repair semantics and the impact of adopting different semantics, approximations, and encodings.
Abstract:Repair-based semantics have been extensively studied as a means of obtaining meaningful answers to queries posed over inconsistent knowledge bases (KBs). While several works have considered how to exploit a priority relation between facts to select optimal repairs, the question of how to specify such preferences remains largely unaddressed. This motivates us to introduce a declarative rule-based framework for specifying and computing a priority relation between conflicting facts. As the expressed preferences may contain undesirable cycles, we consider the problem of determining when a set of preference rules always yields an acyclic relation, and we also explore a pragmatic approach that extracts an acyclic relation by applying various cycle removal techniques. Towards an end-to-end system for querying inconsistent KBs, we present a preliminary implementation and experimental evaluation of the framework, which employs answer set programming to evaluate the preference rules, apply the desired cycle resolution techniques to obtain a priority relation, and answer queries under prioritized-repair semantics.

Abstract:In this paper, we explore a quantitative approach to querying inconsistent description logic knowledge bases. We consider weighted knowledge bases in which both axioms and assertions have (possibly infinite) weights, which are used to assign a cost to each interpretation based upon the axioms and assertions it violates. Two notions of certain and possible answer are defined by either considering interpretations whose cost does not exceed a given bound or restricting attention to optimal-cost interpretations. Our main contribution is a comprehensive analysis of the combined and data complexity of bounded cost satisfiability and certain and possible answer recognition, for description logics between ELbot and ALCO.