Relational Methods In Computer Science

The calculus of relations has been an important component of the development of logic and algebra since the middle of the nineteenth century, when Augustus De Morgan observed that since a horse is an animal we should be able to infer that the head of a horse is the head of an animal. For this, Aristotelian syllogistic does not suffice: We require relational reasoning. George Boole, in his Mathematical Analysis of Logic of 1847, initiated the treatment of logic as part of mathematics, specifically as part of algebra. Quite the opposite conviction was put forward early this century by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica (1910 - 1913): that mathematics was essentially grounded in logic. Logic thus developed in two streams. On the one hand algebraic logic, in which the calculus of relations played a particularly prominent part, was taken up from Boole by Charles Sanders Peirce, who wished to do for the "calculus of relatives" what Boole had done for the calculus of sets. Peirce's work was in turn taken up by Schroder in his Algebra und Logik der Relative of 1895 (the third part of a massive work on the algebra of logic). Schroder's work, however, lay dormant for more than 40 years, until revived by Alfred Tarski in his seminal paper "On the calculus of binary relations" of 1941 (actually his presidential address to the Association for Symbolic Logic).

This volume addresses all current aspects of relational methods and their applications in computer science. It presents a broad variety of fields and issues in which theories of relations provide conceptual or technical tools. The contributions address such subjects as relational methods in programming, relational constraints, relational methods in linguistics and spatial reasoning, relational modelling of uncertainty. All contributions provide the readers with new and original developments in the respective fields. The reader thus gets an interdisciplinary spectrum of the state of the art of relational methods and implementation-oriented solutions of problems related to these areas.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint postproceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Relational Methods in Computer Science, the 3rd International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra, and the Workshop of COST Action 274. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers address foundational and methodological aspects of the calculi of relations and Kleene algebra, and their application in various areas of computer science and information processing.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post-proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Relational Methods in Computer Science, RelMICS 2001 and the 1st Workshop of COST Action 274 TARSKI, Theory and Application of Relational Structures as Knowledge Instruments held in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands, in October 2001. The 20 revised full papers presented together with an invited paper were carefully reviewed and selected. The papers are organized in topical sections on algebraic and logical foundations of real world relations, mechanization of relational reasoning, and relational scaling and preferences.

This volume is the post conference proceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Relational Methods in Computer Science (RelMiCS 8), held in conjunction with the 3rd International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra and a COST Action 274 (TARSKI) Workshop. This combined meeting took place in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, from February 22 to February 26, 2005.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint postproceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Relational Methods in Computer Science, the 3rd International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra, and the Workshop of COST Action 274. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers address foundational and methodological aspects of the calculi of relations and Kleene algebra, and their application in various areas of computer science and information processing.