Default Reasoning System DeReS

In this paper, we describe an automated reasoning system, called DeReS. DeReS implements default logic of Reiter by supporting several basic reasoning tasks such as testing whether extensions exist, finding one or all extensions (if at least one exists) and querying if a formula belongs to one or all extensions. If an input theory is a logic program, DeReS computes stable models of this program and supports queries on membership of an atom in some or all stable models. The paper contains an account of our preliminary experiments with DeReS and a discussion of the results. We show that a choice of a propositional prover is critical for the efficiency of DeReS. We also present a general technique that eliminates the need for some global consistency checks and results in substantial speedups. We experimentally demonstrate the potential of the concept of stratification for making automated reasoning systems practical.