From database repair programs to consistent query answering in classical logic (extended abstract)

Consistent answers to a query from an inconsistent database are answers that can be simultaneously retrieved from every possible repair; and repairs are consistent instances that minimally differ from the original instance. Database repairs can be specified as the stable models of a disjunctive logic program. In this paper we show how to use the repair programs to transform the problem of consistent query answering into a problem of reasoning wrt a concrete theory written in second-order predicate logic. It also investigated how a first-order theory can be obtained instead, by applying second-order quantifier elimination techniques