Paper: Herbrand Constraint Abduction (at LICS 2005)

Authors: Michael J. Maher

Abstract

In this paper we explore abduction over the Herbrand domain . equations on the algebra of finite terms (or finite trees)1 . which is a central element of logic programming and first-order automated reasoning. This has some relevance to each of the above application areas: in evaluating queries when relations contain complex data such as records, lists and trees, as a concrete form of the key step in backward analysis, and as a view of type inference (type terms are exactly finite terms). However, this paper is a case study of constraint abduction in the Herbrand domain, and these applications will not be pursued further here. All the same, the direct relationship between Herbrand constraint abduction and type inference outlined above should make it easy to interpret the results of this paper in the context of type inference.

BibTeX

  @InProceedings{Maher-HerbrandConstraintA,
    author = 	 {Michael J. Maher},
    title = 	 {Herbrand Constraint Abduction},
    booktitle =  {Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2005)},
    year =	 {2005},
    month =	 {June}, 
    pages =      {397--406},
    location =   {Chicago, USA}, 
    publisher =	 {IEEE Computer Society Press}
  }