Inconsistency arises in many areas in advanced computing. Often inconsistency is unwanted, for example in the specification for a plan or in sensor fusion in robotics; however, sometimes inconsistency is useful. Whether inconsistency is unwanted or useful, there is a need to develop tolerance to inconsistency in application technologies such as databases, knowledge bases, and software systems. To address this situation, inconsistency tolerance is being built on foundational technologies for identifying and analyzing inconsistency in information, for representing and reasoning with inconsistent information, for resolving inconsistent information, and for merging inconsistent information.

The idea for this book arose out of a Dagstuhl Seminar on the topic held in summer 2003. The nine chapters in this first book devoted to the subject of inconsistency tolerance were carefully invited and anonymously reviewed. The book provides an exciting introduction to this new field.

Inhalt

to Inconsistency Tolerance.- Consistency of XML Specifications.- Consistent Query Answers in Virtual Data Integration Systems.- Representing Paraconsistent Reasoning via Quantified Propositional Logic.- On the Computational Complexity of Minimal-Change Integrity Maintenance in Relational Databases.- On the Complexity of Paraconsistent Inference Relations.- Approaches to Measuring Inconsistent Information.- Inconsistency Issues in Spatial Databases.- Relevant Logic and Paraconsistency.