[DL] ASPCOMP 2015: First Call for Benchmarks

[Marco Maratea]

[apologies for any cross-posting]

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               6th Answer Set Programming Competition 2015
                            (ASPCOMP 2015)

		      Call for Benchmark Problems

  Aalto University and University of Calabria and University of Genoa

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The 6th Answer Set Programming Competition (ASPCOMP 2015) is the main
event where ASP systems are evaluated.

The event is currently facing the benchmarks selection process.


== Call for Benchmark Problems ==

Participants will compete on a selected collection of declarative
specifications of benchmark problems, taken from a variety of domains as
well as real world applications, and instances thereof.

These include, but are not limited to:

- Deductive database tasks on large data-sets
- Sequential and Temporal Planning
- Classic and Applicative graph problems
- Puzzles and Combinatorics
- Scheduling, Timetabling, and other resource allocation problems
- Combinatorial Optimization Problems
- Ontology reasoning
- Automated Theorem Proving and Model Checking
- Constraint Programming problems
- Other AI problems


We encourage to provide help by devising new challenging benchmark
problems.

Based on observations from past events, we particularly encourage the
submission of problems:

* arising from applications of practical impact, and/or

* being ASP focused, i.e. whose encodings are non-tight.


Benchmark authors are expected to produce:

* a short problem description in natural language,

* a problem encoding in the ASPCore-2 language (cf.
  https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2013/ASPStandardization),

* an instance set (composed of a significant number of instances, e.g.
50)
  and/or an instance generator,

* a solution checker (cf.
  https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2013/ProblemIOSpecification#checker).

About the instances, an indication about which instances, either
provided in an instance set, or generated with some given parameters
of the generator, is expected to be "hard", or "easy", is welcome.

Please submit benchmark problems by email: aspcomp2015 at dibris.unige.it.

All submitted benchmark problems will become part of the ASP suite
of benchmarks made available to the community, and a selection
will enter the 6th Answer Set Programming Competition. Organizers
reserve the right of this choice.


=== About the ASP Competition Series ===

Answer Set Programming is a well-established paradigm of declarative
programming with close relationship to other declarative modeling
paradigms and languages, such as SAT Modulo Theories, Constraint
Handling Rules, FO(.), PDDL, CASC, and many others.

Since the first informal editions (Dagstuhl 2002 and 2005), ASP
systems compare themselves in the nowadays customary ASP Competition:
the 6th ASP Competition will be run jointly among the Aalto University
(Finland), the University of Calabria (Italy) and the University of
Genoa (Italy), in Spring/Summer 2015. The event is the sequel to the
ASP Competition series, held at the University of Potsdam (Germany) in
2006-2007, at the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2009, and at
University of Calabria (Italy) in 2011, jointly between the University
of Calabria (Italy) and the Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
in 2013, and by the same organization of this year in 2014. The
current competition takes place in cooperation with the 13th
International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic
Reasoning (LPNMR 2015)

http://lpnmr2015.mat.unical.it/,

where the results will be announced.


== Important Dates ==

 * Problem submission deadline: March 15th, 2015


== Further Information ==

For further information contact us by email:
aspcomp2015 at dibris.unige.it.