Exploring relations between answer set programs

Abstract

Equivalence and generality relations over logic programs have been proposed in answer set programming to semantically compare information contents of logic programs. In this paper, we overview previous relations of answer set programs, and propose a general framework that subsumes previous relations. The proposed framework allows us to compare programs possibly having non-minimal answer sets as well as to explore new relations between programs. Such new relations include relativized variants of generality relations over logic programs. By selecting contexts for comparison, the proposed framework can represent weak, strong and uniform variants of generality, inclusion and equivalence relations. These new relations can be applied to comparison of abductive logic programs and coordination of multiple answer set programs. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.