Termination Analysis of Tabled Logic Programs Using Mode and Type Information

Tabled logic programming is receiving increasing attention in the Logic Programming community. It avoids many of the shortcomings of SLD(NF) execution and provides a more flexible and efficient execution mechanism for logic programs. In particular, tabled execution of logic programs terminates more often than execution based on SLD-resolution. One of the few approaches studying termination of tabled logic programs was developed by Decorte et al. They present necessary and sufficient conditions for two notions of universal termination under SLG-resolution, the resolution principle of tabling: quasi-termination and (the stronger notion of) LG-termination. Starting from these necessary and sufficient conditions, we introduce sufficient conditions which are stated fully at the clause level and are easy to automatize. To this end, we use mode and type information: we consider simply moded, well-typed programs and queries. We point out how our termination conditions can be automatized, by extending the recently developed constraint-based automatic termination analysis for SLD-resolution by Decorte and De Schreye.

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