From Logic Programming to Answer Set Programming. Katsumi Inoue,National Institute of Informatics.

Abstract

Horn logic programs on which Prolog is based have a restriction in the syntax of programs, where only definite knowledge can be represented. This limitation does not enable us to represent incomplete and indefinite knowledge in logic programs. To overcome this problem, several extended classes of logic programs have been proposed since late in the 1980s. Among them, answer set programming launched out into the new paradigm of logic programming in 1999, in which a logic program represents the constraints of a problem and its answer sets correspond to the solutions of the problem. Answer set programming has grown into one of the most popular research fields in logic programming. In this article, we review the essentials of answer set programming from the past to the future. © 2008, Japan Society for Software Science and Technology. All rights reserved. © 2008, Japan Society for Software Science and Technology. All rights reserved.