Computing the well-founded model of deductive databases

The well-founded model is one of the most popular models of general logic programs, i.e. logic programs with negation in the bodies of clauses. We present a method for constructing this model for general deductive databases, which are logic programs without any function symbols. The method adopts paraconsistent relations as the semantic objects associated with the predicate symbols of the database. Paraconsistent relations are a generalization of ordinary relations in that they allow manipulation of incomplete as well as inconsistent information. The first step in the model construction method is to transform the database clauses into paraconsistent relation definitions involving these operators. The second step is to build the well-founded model iteratively. Algorithms for both steps are presented and their termination and correctness is also established.