Developing a Declarative Rule Language for Applications in Product Configuration

A rule-based language is proposed for product configuration applications. It is equipped with a declarative semantics providing formal definitions for main concepts in product configuration, including configuration models, requirements and valid configurations. The semantics uses Horn clause derivability to guarantee that each element in a configuration has a justification. This leads to favorable computational properties. For example, the validity of a configuration can be decided in linear time and other computational tasks remain in NP. It is shown that CSP and dynamic CSP can be embedded in the proposed language which seems to be more suitable for representing configuration knowledge. The rule language is closely related to normal logic programs with the stable model semantics. This connection is exploited in the first implementation which is based on a translator from rules to normal programs and on an existing high performance implementation of the stable model semantics, the Smodels system.

[1]  David B. Searls,et al.  Logic-Based Configuration with a Semantic Network , 1990, J. Log. Program..

[2]  John P. McDermott,et al.  R1: A Rule-Based Configurer of Computer Systems , 1982, Artif. Intell..

[3]  Jean H. Gallier,et al.  Linear-Time Algorithms for Testing the Satisfiability of Propositional Horn Formulae , 1984, J. Log. Program..

[4]  Ilkka Niemelä,et al.  Smodels - An Implementation of the Stable Model and Well-Founded Semantics for Normal LP , 1997, LPNMR.

[5]  Brian Falkenhainer,et al.  Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction Problems , 1990, AAAI.

[6]  Bernhard Nebel,et al.  Encoding Planning Problems in Nonmonotonic Logic Programs , 1997, ECP.

[7]  Jürgen Dix,et al.  Semantics of Logic Programs: Their Intuitions and Formal Properties. An Overview , 1996, Logic, Action, and Information.

[8]  T. Soininen,et al.  State-of-the-practice in product configuration — a survey of 10 cases in the Finnish industry , 1995 .

[9]  C. R. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Fully Local and Efficient Evaluation of Alternating Fixed Points (Extended Abstract) , 1998, TACAS.

[10]  Seif Haridi,et al.  A Tool for Developing Interactive Configuration Applications , 1996, J. Log. Program..

[11]  I. Niemelä,et al.  Formalizing configuration knowledge using rules with choices , 1998 .

[12]  Ilkka Niemelä,et al.  Efficient Implementation of the Well-founded and Stable Model Semantics , 1996, JICSLP.

[13]  Edward P. K. Tsang,et al.  Foundations of constraint satisfaction , 1993, Computation in cognitive science.