A Rational and Efficient Algorithm for View Deletion in Databases

In this paper, we show how techniques from disjunctive logic programming and classical first-order theorem proving can be used for efficient (deductive) database updates. The key idea is to tranform the given database together with the update request into a disjunctive logic program and apply disjunctive techniques (such as minimal model reasoning) to solve the original update problem. We present two variants of our algorithm both of which are of polynomial space complexity. One variant, which is based on offline preprocessing, is of polynomial time complexity. We also show that both variants are rational in the sense that they satisfy certain rationality postulates stemming from philosophical works on belief dynamics.