Database Updates in the Event Calculus

Abstract This paper investigates a special case of the event calculus, concerned with database updates. It discusses the way relational databases, historical databases, modal logic, the situation calculus, and case semantics deal with database updates and compares the event calculus with the situation calculus in detail. It argues that the event calculus can overcome the computational aspects of the frame problem in the situation calculus and that it can be implemented with an efficiency approaching that of destructive assignment in relational databases.

[1]  Keith L. Clark,et al.  Negation as Failure , 1987, Logic and Data Bases.

[2]  Murray Shanahan,et al.  Representing Continuous Change in the Event Calculus , 1990, ECAI.

[3]  Richard T. Snodgrass,et al.  The temporal query language TQuel , 1987, TODS.

[4]  J. McCarthy.  Situations, Actions, and Causal Laws , 1963 .

[5]  Amílcar Sernadas,et al.  Temporal aspects of logical procedure definiton , 1980, Inf. Syst..

[6]  Robert A. Kowalski,et al.  Logic for problem solving , 1982, The computer science library : Artificial intelligence series.

[7]  James F. Allen.  Towards a General Theory of Action and Time , 1984, Artif. Intell..

[8]  Ronald M. Lee,et al.  Temporal Inferencing on Administrative Databases , 1985 .

[9]  Drew McDermott,et al.  Nonmonotonic Logic and Temporal Projection , 1987, Artif. Intell..

[10]  David Scott Warren,et al.  Formal semantics for time in databases , 1982, TODS.

[11]  J. W. LLOYD,et al.  Making Prolog more Expressive , 1984, J. Log. Program..

[12]  Suryanarayana M. Sripada,et al.  A logical framework for temporal deductive databases , 1988, VLDB.

[13]  Akikazu Takeuchi,et al.  Partial Evaluation of Prolog Programs and its Application to Meta Programming , 1986, IFIP Congress.

[14]  Robert A. Kowalski,et al.  Abduction Compared with Negation by Failure , 1989, ICLP.

[15]  Michael Stonebraker,et al.  The Design of the POSTGRES Storage System , 1988, VLDB.

[16]  M. Blasgen.  Database Systems , 1982, Science.

[17]  Fariba Sadri,et al.  Three recent approaches to temporal reasoning , 1987 .

[18]  Susan Jones,et al.  LEGOL 2.0: A relational specification language for complex rules , 1979, Inf. Syst..

[19]  John McCarthy,et al.  SOME PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ARTI CIAL INTELLIGENCE , 1987 .

[20]  Chris Evans,et al.  Negation-as-failure as an approach to the Hanks-McDermott problem , 1989 .

[21]  James F. Allen.  Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals , 1983, CACM.