Abstract Diagnosis

Diagnosis Marco Comini a, Giorgio Levi a, Maria Chiara Meo b and Giuliana Vitiello c aDipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Corso Italia 40, 56125 Pisa, Italy. bDipartimento di Matematica Pura ed Applicata, Università di L’Aquila, via Vetoio, località Coppito, 67010 L’Aquila, Italy. cDipartimento di Informatica ed Applicazioni, Università di Salerno, Baronissi (Salerno), Italy. Abstract We show how declarative diagnosis techniques can be extended to cope with verification of operational properties, such as computed and correct answers, and of abstract properties, such as depth(k) answers and groundness dependencies. The extension is achieved by using a simple semantic framework, based on abstract interpretation. The resulting technique (abstract diagnosis) leads to elegant bottom-up and top-down verification methods, which do not require to determine the symptoms in advance, and which are effective in the case of abstract properties described by finite domains.We show how declarative diagnosis techniques can be extended to cope with verification of operational properties, such as computed and correct answers, and of abstract properties, such as depth(k) answers and groundness dependencies. The extension is achieved by using a simple semantic framework, based on abstract interpretation. The resulting technique (abstract diagnosis) leads to elegant bottom-up and top-down verification methods, which do not require to determine the symptoms in advance, and which are effective in the case of abstract properties described by finite domains.