Just enough tabling

Abstract

We introduce just enough tabling (JET), a mechanism to suspend and resume the tabled execution of logic programs at an arbitrary point. In particular, JET allows pruning of tabled logic programs to be performed without resorting to any recomputation. We discuss issues that are involved in supporting pruning in tabled resolution, how re-execution of tabled computations which were previously pruned can be avoided, and we describe the implementation of such a scheme based on an abstract machine like CHAT, which implements the suspension/resumption support that tabling requires through a combination of freezing and copying of execution states of suspended computations. Properties of just enough ..