Theorem Proving and Logic Programming with Constraints

Summary

The last few years have seen a considerable amount of successful research in logic programming and theorem proving based on constraints. Initially devised as a concept for enhancing Prolog by a logic version of arithmetics, the ideas of constraint logic programming have spread out to affect the thinking about many other problems in programming languages and theorem proving.

As can be seen from the abstracts of the talks, the workshop succeeded in bringing together researchers from different areas, including artificial intelligence, logic and functional programming, algebraic specification, unification, rewriting and theorem proving.

Constraints are logical descriptions(e.g.,first-order formulae)for which specialized and relatively efficient reasoning techniques are available. Typically, constraint techniques exploit some kind of constraint propagation to avoid or reduce the combinatorial search coming with general purpose techniques.

Some of the talks were concerned with constraint techniques for particular domains or applications. Other talks outlined and analyzed general frameworks providing for the disciplined combination of constraint techniques with more general reasoning mechanism such as resolution. Seen from this perspective, the integration of constraints is in fact part of the more general research activity concerned with the combination and modularisation of computational logics.

This Dagstuhl workshop will be followed by a series of related workshops, which will be organized in Val d'Ajol(1992), Barcelona(1993) and Munich(1994) by the recently approved Esprit working group "Construction of Computational Logics"(CCL, #6028).