A Delta Debugger for ILP Query Execution

Because query execution is the most crucial part of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) algorithms, a lot of effort is invested in developing faster execution mechanisms. These execution mechanisms typically have a low-level implementation, making them hard to debug. Moreover, other factors such as the complexity of the problems handled by ILP algorithms and size of the code base of ILP data mining systems make debugging at this level a very difficult job. In this work, we present the trace-based debugging approach currently used in the development of new execution mechanisms in hipP, the engine underlying the ACE Data Mining system. This debugger uses the delta debugging algorithm to automatically reduce the total time needed to expose bugs in ILP execution, thus making manual debugging step much lighter.