LP2PB: Translating Answer Set Programs into Pseudo-Boolean Theories
This work addresses the performance bottleneck in answer set programming solvers for researchers and practitioners in knowledge representation, though it is incremental as it builds on existing translation methods.
The authors tackled the limitation of ASP solvers based on resolution by developing LP2PB, a tool that translates ASP programs into pseudo-Boolean theories to leverage the stronger cutting plane proof system. Their evaluation showed mixed results, with traditional ASP solvers generally outperforming the approach, but identified specific benchmark families where the translation performed better.
Answer set programming (ASP) is a well-established knowledge representation formalism. Most ASP solvers are based on (extensions of) technology from Boolean satisfiability solving. While these solvers have shown to be very successful in many practical applications, their strength is limited by their underlying proof system, resolution. In this paper, we present a new tool LP2PB that translates ASP programs into pseudo-Boolean theories, for which solvers based on the (stronger) cutting plane proof system exist. We evaluate our tool, and the potential of cutting-plane-based solving for ASP on traditional ASP benchmarks as well as benchmarks from pseudo-Boolean solving. Our results are mixed: overall, traditional ASP solvers still outperform our translational approach, but several benchmark families are identified where the balance shifts the other way, thereby suggesting that further investigation into a stronger proof system for ASP is valuable.