A Logical Framework for Knowledge Base Maintenance

The maintenance sequences of a knowledge base and their limits are introduced.Some concepts used in knowledge base maintenance,such as new laws,user‘s rejections,and reconstructions of a knowledge base are defined;the related theorems are proved.A procedure is defined using transition systems;it generates maintenance sequences for a given user‘s model and a knowledge base.It is proved that all sequences produced by the procedure are convergent,and their limit is the set of true sentences of the model.Some computational aspects of reconstructions are studied.An R-calculus is given to deduce a reconstruction when a knowledge base meets a user‘s rejection.The work is compared with AGM‘s theory of belief revision.