The consistency of negation as failure. (English) Zbl 0598.68064

Flannagan, Tim

J. Logic Program. 3, 93-114 (1986).

The paper claims to show fundamental errors in K. L. Clark’s attempt [Logic and databases, 293-322 (1978; Zbl 0412.68089)] to validate negation as failure in first-order logic. The ”closed world assumption” is shown to be generally absurd and even irrelevant. The query evaluation process is also considered claiming that negation interpreted as failure is of no practical use as a theorem prover.

Reviewer: E.Knuth

MSC:

68T15	Theorem proving (deduction, resolution, etc.) (MSC2010)
68N01	General topics in the theory of software
68P20	Information storage and retrieval of data
68Q60	Specification and verification (program logics, model checking, etc.)

Keywords:

completed database; logic programming; closed world assumption; query evaluation process

Citations:

Zbl 0412.68089