A Logic Programming Approach to the Integration, Repairing and Querying of Inconsistent Databases

In this paper we present a logic programming based framework for the integration of possibly inconsistent databases. In particular we consider the problem of ‘merging’ databases and, since the resulting ‘merged’ database may be inconsistent (with respect to the constraints defined on the input databases or with respect to additional constraints), we address the problem of managing inconsistent databases. We propose a general logic framework for computing repairs and consistent answers over inconsistent databases. The logic framework and the techniques for computing repairs and consistent answers proposed here are more general than previously proposed techniques. Indeed, our technique is sound and complete for universally quantified constraints whereas previous defined techniques only consider restricted cases.