Francesco Chiariello

Francesco Chiariello, Fabrizio Maria Maggi, Fabio Patrizi

We propose Answer Set Programming (ASP) as an approach for modeling and solving problems from the area of Declarative Process Mining (DPM). We consider here three classical problems, namely, Log Generation, Conformance Checking, and Query Checking. These problems are addressed from both a control-flow and a data-aware perspective. The approach is based on the representation of process specifications as (finite-state) automata. Since these are strictly more expressive than the de facto DPM standard specification language DECLARE, more general specifications than those typical of DPM can be handled, such as formulas in linear-time temporal logic over finite traces. (Full version available in the Proceedings of the 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence).

Francesco Chiariello, Valeria Fionda, Antonio Ielo et al.

Answer Set Programming (ASP), a well-known declarative logic programming paradigm, has recently found practical application in Process Mining. In particular, ASP has been used to model tasks involving declarative specifications of business processes. In this area, Declare stands out as the most widely adopted declarative process modeling language, offering a means to model processes through sets of constraints valid traces must satisfy, that can be expressed in Linear Temporal Logic over Finite Traces (LTLf). Existing ASP-based solutions encode Declare constraints by modeling the corresponding LTLf formula or its equivalent automaton which can be obtained using established techniques. In this paper, we introduce a novel encoding for Declare constraints that directly models their semantics as ASP rules, eliminating the need for intermediate representations. We assess the effectiveness of this novel approach on two Process Mining tasks by comparing it with alternative ASP encodings and a Python library for Declare. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).