Fifth Answer Set Programming Competition (ASPCOMP 2014)

Important Dates

NOTE: Due to the nature of the competition, schedule can be subject to further modification. Please check this site out often for news and updates.

• March 1st, 2014: Participant registration opens
• March 31st, 2014: Participant registration closes (new)
• April 16th, 2014: Competition server closes to participants
• April 16th, 2014: The competition starts (extended)
• July 2014: Awards are presented at FLoC (22nd) and at ICLP (19th-22nd)

Call for Participation

• Please find the official Call for Participation here.

News and updates

• 08 April, 2014: Application procedure updated, submission procedure published.
• 31 March, 2014: Application procedure updated
• 14 March, 2014: Important dates updated
• 20 February, 2014: Application directions now available, registration opens March 1st, 2014.
• 11 February, 2014: Call for Participation updated. Please check it out!

• 03 February, 2014: Announcement - ASPCOMP 2014 is officially affiliated with the 30th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2014).

• 03 February, 2014: Call for participation updated.
• 13 January, 2014: Preliminary Call for Participation out.

Application and Submission Procedure

Application Procedure

Participants willing to apply for the competition can send an email (starting from March 1st, 2014) to this address specifying:

• the name of their team;
• names and affiliation of the team members (institution, research group);
• name and number of the systems the team will submit;
• specification about whether a system is an updated version of a solution submitted to the 2013 edition;
• specific software requirements: e.g. linux packages/libraries needed to run your system.

• language support: e.g. <<our submission supports normal logic programs and aggregates, it does not support weak constraints and function symbol>>, or so, etc.

Applicants will get a private e-mail with the instructions for submitting systems and login credentials for accessing our Competition server through ssh.

System Package(s) submission

Once received the instructions via e-mail, participants can log in onto the competition hardware system, and are free to use their account for building, testing, and submitting systems packages purposes; access is avalaible until the day before the competition starts.

In order to properly submit a system package, participants must create a sub-directory with the name of the system at hand in the directory "submission" of their home. In case of several systems submissions, participants must create a sub-directory for each system.

Reminder: participants can log in and update their submission until the competition starts. Please check the deadline out in the above section.

Package Structure

The structure of each submission package must be the following:

    system-name
      └ bin
          └ run
          └ mysolver
          └ my_helper_tool

A package should contain at least a folder named bin. The package is expected to be launched with the same configuration for all the benchmark domains, i.e., the package must comprise all files required for running the submitted system, on any problem encoding and any problem instance.

Command Line

The main script "run" takes three arguments:

• The first argument ($1, argv[1], ...) is the maximum integer (0 if not meaningful for the problem/instance at hand).
• The second argument ($2, argv[2], ...) is the maximum nesting level of functional terms (0 if not meaningful for the problem/instance at hand).
• The third argument ($3, argv[3], ...) is a comma-separated list of output predicates p1/n1, p2/n2,... with predicate names pi and arities ni. The list coincides with the list of output predicates which are allowed in the output of the run script. For each domain, the list can be found in the related checker folder, for convenience.

Of course, participants are free to design submitted scripts in order to take into account the three arguments, or not.

A problem instance in the prescribed format is fed to run's standard input. The output of each run must be printed to standard output, and a proper exit code must be issued, according to the competition format.

More details on input and output are available in the proper section.

An example of run script is available here.

Rules, Scoring and Details

Rules and Scoring

Please find details about rules and scoring here.

Input/Output format

Input and Output formats do not significantly change with respect to ASPCOMP 2013.

Input format

Input format do not change w.r.t. last edition. Please find further info via the official ASPCOMP 2013 website:

• ASPCOMP 2013 input specs

Output format

Expected output is almost the same as the one from last edition: see note below. Please find last specs via the official ASPCOMP 2013 website:

• ASPCOMP 2013 output specs.

Please have a look at the ASPCOMP 2013 ASP standardization page.

Contacts

Organizing Committee

The Fifth Answer Set Programming Competition is hosted and regulated jointly by Aalto University (Finland), University of Calabria (Italy) and University of Genova (Italy).

Co-Chairs

• Francesco Calimeri

• Martin Gebser

• Marco Maratea

• Francesco Ricca

Email and Contacts

• Drop us a note at aspcomp2014@mat.unical.it.