Consistent query answering with prioritized active integrity constraints
Marco Calautti, Luciano Caroprese, Sergio Greco, Cristian Molinaro, Irina Trubitsyna, Ester Zumpano · 2020
Consistent query answering is a principled approach for querying inconsistent databases. It relies on two basic notions: the notion of a repair, that is, a consistent database that "minimally" differs from the original one, and the notion of a consistent query answer, that is, a query answer that can be derived from every repair. In general, an inconsistent database can admit multiple repairs, each corresponding to a different way of restoring consistency, and the consistent query answering framework does not make any discrimination among them. However, in many applications it is natural and desired to express preferences among the different choices that can be made to resolve inconsistency.