A Theoretical Study of (Full) Tabled Constraint Logic Programming

Abstract

Logic programming with tabling and constraints (TCLP, tabled constraint logic programming) has been shown to be more expressive and, in some cases, more efficient than LP, CLP, or LP with tabling. In this paper we provide insights regarding the semantics, correctness, completeness, and termination of top-down execution strategies for full TCLP, i.e., TCLP featuring entailment checking in the calls and in the answers. We present a top-down semantics for TCLP and show that it is equivalent to a fixpoint semantics. We study how the constraints that a program generates can effectively impact termination, even for constraint classes that are not constraint compact, generalizing previous results. We also present how different variants of constraint projection impact the correctness and completeness of TCLP implementations. All of the presented characteristics are implemented (or can be experimented with) in Mod TCLP, a modular framework for Tabled Constraint Logic Programming, part of the Ciao Prolog logic programming system.