Control of inconsistency and redundancy in Prolog-type knowledge bases

A methodology is discussed for analyzing the contents of a Prolog-type knowledge base and eliminating inconsistent and redundant logical elements. A graphical representation of the logic required to infer a goal, called the goal-facts network, is introduced, and the identification of inconsistency in that network is described. Two alternatives, Boolean algebra and the Karnaugh map, are presented as tools to identify and to examine redundancy. >