Finite Controllability of Conjunctive Query Answering with Existential Rules: Two Steps Forward

Reasoning with existential rules typically consists of checking whether a Boolean conjunctive query is satisfied by all models of a first-order sentence having the form of a conjunction of Datalog rules extended with existential quantifiers in rule-heads. To guarantee decidability, five basic decidable classes – linear, weakly-acyclic, guarded, sticky, and shy – have been singled out, together with several generalizations and combinations. For all basic classes, except shy, the important property of finite controllability has been proved, ensuring that a query is satisfied by all models of the sentence if, and only if, it is satisfied by all of its finite models. This paper takes two steps forward: (i) devise a general technique to facilitate the process of (dis)proving finite controllability of an arbitrary class of existential rules; and (ii) specialize the technique to complete the picture for the five mentioned classes, by showing that also shy is finitely controllable.