Controlled generation of intensional answers

Intensional answers are conditions that tuples of values must satisfy to belong to the usual extensional answer of a query addressed to a deductive database. The authors review the concept of intensional answers and introduce a general method for generating them as logical consequences of the query and of deduction rules. The authors show how integrity constraints can filter out inadequate answers and produce simpler and more informative answers. An efficient organization for the combination of answers and constraints is described. The introduction of negation in queries and in the body of deduction rules is discussed. Beyond the mechanics of answer generation, the interest of the approach also depends on a strategy for selecting answers to a user submitting a query. This requires techniques for user modeling and dialogue management similar to those required for expert systems