An abductive proof procedure for active databases and agents

Recent work has suggested abductive logic programming as a suitable formalism to represent active databases and intelligent agents. In particular, abducibles in abductive logic programs can be used to represent actions, and integrity constraints in abductive logic programs can be used to represent active/reactive rules. One would expect that, in this approach, abductive proof procedures could provide the engine underlying active database management systems and agents. We analyse existing abductive proof procedures and argue that they are inadequate in handling these applications. The inadequacy is due to the \incorrect" treatment of negation in integrity constraints. We propose a new abductive proof procedure and give examples of how this proof procedure can be used to achieve active behaviour in (deductive) databases and proactivity and reactivity in agents.