Disjunctive ASP with Functions: Decidable Queries and Effective Computation

Abstract: Querying over disjunctive ASP with functions is a highly undecidable task in general. In this paper we focus on disjunctive logic programs with stratified negation and functions under the stable model semantics (ASP^{fs}). We show that query answering in this setting is decidable, if the query is finitely recursive (ASP^{fs}_{fr}). Our proof yields also an effective method for query evaluation. It is done by extending the magic set technique to ASP^{fs}_{fr}. We show that the magic-set rewritten program is query equivalent to the original one (under both brave and cautious reasoning). Moreover, we prove that the rewritten program is also finitely ground, implying that it is decidable. Importantly, finitely ground programs are evaluable using existing ASP solvers, making the class of ASP^{fs}_{fr} queries usable in practice.