Solid Semantics and Extension Aggregation Using Quota Rules under Integrity Constraints

Manipulation of judgment aggregation procedures has first been studied by List [14] and Dietrich and List [8], and Endriss et al. [9] were the first to study it from a computational perspective. Baumeister et al. [2, 3, 6] introduced the concepts of bribery and control in judgment aggregation and studied their algorithmic and complexity-theoretic properties. However, their results are restricted to Hamming-distance-respecting preferences and their results on bribery apply to the premise-based procedure only. We extend these results to more general preference notions, including closeness-respecting and top-respecting preferences that are due to Dietrich and List and have been applied to manipulation in judgment aggregation by Baumeister et al. [4, 5]. In addition, our results apply to uniform premise-based quota rules that generalize the premise-based procedure.

To more efficiently cover a wide spectrum of conceptual modeling applications such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, and medical information systems, we envision multi-paradigm design environments which have reasoning capability to support analyzing specifcations for correctness. For such applications, information system designers employ conceptual models characterized by semantically-rich specification languages. The problem of providing a comprehensive formal framework for such languages has not been adequately addressed. This paper investigates a formal system for this purpose called Event-Formula Logic (EFL). The analysis focuses in particular on characterizing correctness of database updates. Its applicability is demonstrated from two perspectives: deriving preconditions that guarantee a given update will not violate an integrity constraint, and determining alternative integrity maintenance rules for performing corrective actions when the application semantics requires this update interpretation. The work described in this paper represents an important step in the analysis of database update semantics through the use of algorithmic logic. As a result, it contributes towards providing a formal basis for semantically-rich information system design environments.