Coalgebraic Semantics for Parallel Derivation Strategies in Logic Programming

Logic programming, a class of programming languages based on first-order logic, provides simple and efficient tools for goal-oriented proof-search. Logic programming supports recursive computations, and some logic programs resemble the inductive or coinductive definitions written in functional programming languages. In this paper, we give a coalgebraic semantics to logic programming. We show that ground logic programs can be modelled by either P-f P-f-coalgebras or P-f List-coalgebras on Set. We analyse different kinds of derivation strategies and derivation trees (proof-trees, SLD-trees, and-or parallel trees) used in logic programming, and show how they can be modelled coalgebraically.