An Introduction to Inductive Logic Programming

Abstract

Inductive logic programming (ILP) is concerned with the development of techniques and tools for relational data mining. Besides the ability to deal with data stored in multiple tables, ILP systems are usually able to take into account generally valid background (domain) knowledge in the form of a logic program. They also use the powerful language of logic programs for describing discovered patterns. This chapter introduces the basics of logic programming and relates logic programming terminology to database terminology. It then defines the task of relational rule induction, the basic data mining task addressed by ILP systems, and presents some basic techniques for solving this task. It concludes with an overview of other relational data mining tasks addressed by ILP systems.