🚀 go-pugleaf

The Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Logic Programs for Consistency-Based
Diagnosis" is available for anonymous ftp from ftp.sce.carleton.ca in
the directory pub/diagnosis. Also available from this site are the
Prolog programs described in the dissertation.

The following is the dissertation abstract:

  In this dissertation we develop a solution to the problem of
  automating systems diagnosis, where we define diagnosis to be the
  task of identifying potentially faulty system components given
  assertions regarding intended or erroneous system behavior. The
  solution is applicable to systems that are characterized by the fact
  that (i) there exists no {\it a priori} knowledge concerning the
  modes or probability of component failure, and (ii) either there
  does not exist complete knowledge of the system's specification or
  observability of the system itself is restricted. Domains for which
  there exist significant numbers of systems satisfying these
  properties are software development domains, hardware development
  domains and domains concerned with the development of system
  specifications. The solution to the problem takes the form of a
  theoretical framework and a number of polynomial-time procedures for
  computing the diagnoses defined by the framework. The framework we
  develop is an instance of an existing diagnostic approach known as
  consistency-based diagnosis.  Diagnoses are defined with respect to
  a set of first-order assertions and a system description based on a
  logic program. Using logic programs as the basis for system
  descriptions presents a number of advantages including ease of model
  construction, the ability to diagnose hierarchically structured
  systems and software systems, and the automatic definition of
  negative system behavior. Two necessary and sufficient conditions
  for component abnormality are defined and shown to reflect intuitive
  notions of faults occurring in hierarchies. We also formally show
  that the approach to logic program diagnosis known as declarative
  error diagnosis is a specialized instance of the consistency-based
  diagnosis framework developed here. One of the two diagnosis
  computation procedures developed for the framework efficiently
  computes diagnoses for a restricted class of assertions.  We prove
  this procedure sound, identify conditions for completeness and prove
  its implementation correct. The other, more complex, procedure
  computes diagnoses for a more general class of assertions.  We prove
  this procedure to be sound, discuss completeness issues and prove
  its implementation correct. Both procedures are implemented in
  Prolog and are used to compute diagnoses for a combinational logic
  circuit, a sequential logic circuit and a buggy logic program.

-- 
Greg Bond === email: bond@ee.ubc.ca === Dept. of Electrical Engineering
              voice: (604) 822 0899     University of British Columbia
              fax:   (604) 822 5949     2356 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC
                                        Canada, V6T 1Z4