The Design of the Sixth Answer Set Programming Competition

Abstract

Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-known paradigm of declarative programming with roots in logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning. Similar to other closely-related problem-solving technologies, such as SAT/SMT, QBF, Planning and Scheduling, advances in ASP solving are assessed in competition events. In this paper, we report about the design of the Sixth ASP Competition, which is jointly organized by the University of Calabria (Italy), Aalto University (Finland), and the University of Genova (Italy), in affiliation with the 13th International Conference on Logic Programming and Non-Monotonic Reasoning (LPNMR 2015). This edition maintains some of the design decisions introduced in the last event, e.g., the design of tracks, the scoring scheme, and the adherence to a fixed modeling language in order to push the adoption of the Open image in new window standard. On the other hand, it features also some novelties, like a benchmarks selection stage to classify instances according to their expected hardness, and a “marathon” track where the best performing systems are given more time for solving hard benchmarks.