Concluding Remarks

The three panels show that there is a vivid discussion on fundamental issues in ASP going on. This is good news since one has to bear in mind that ASP as a programming paradigm is still at an early stage and therefore a broad and intensive process of discussion is necessary in order to fine-tune ASP into a successful and widely accepted programming language. We summarize some of the fundamental questions raised in all panels:

• there are different opinions, which in direction ASP should evolve: (i) ASP seen as a ``core'', resp. ``assembler''-language, with several front-ends providing dedicated application-specific interfaces to users; (ii) with focus to be used in connection with other languages, e.g. database query languages; or (iii) development of ASP into a ``general high-level language'' providing numerous libraries etc.
• Especially in connection with (iii), some shortcomings have been identified, in particular the lack of utilities which support the programmer. It was mentioned several times that debugging and visualization tools are issues which have to be solved (both theoretically and practically). As long as answer-set programming lags behind other programming paradigms in these particular aspects, it would be hard to turn ASP into an accepted and popular methodology for a broader class of users.
• Finally, there have been discussions which applications are well suited for ASP, and in which areas ASP could succeed compared to established competitor paradigms. It was mentioned that concrete promising realizations using ASP, including a diagnosis system for the space shuttle or in the area of bio-informatics should guide the direction. Further examples mentioned have been data integration and reasoning over complex knowledge, for instance, within ontologies. This application-oriented view also goes conform with comments on more theoretical comments on application areas, where the key words in the panelists' comments are combinatorial problems combined with a minimization problem.

To conclude, all the panels announced an optimistic view on the further development of ASP. This view was also supported by attending scientists which are not that tightly linked to the ASP-community. The overall impression about the outcome of these panels is therefore definitely positive and gives an optimistic opinion on the future of ASP.