  This paper introduces an abductive framework for updating knowledge bases
represented by extended disjunctive programs. We first provide a simple
transformation from abductive programs to update programs which are logic
programs specifying changes on abductive hypotheses. Then, extended abduction,
which was introduced by the same authors as a generalization of traditional
abduction, is computed by the answer sets of update programs. Next, different
types of updates, view updates and theory updates are characterized by
abductive programs and computed by update programs. The task of consistency
restoration is also realized as special cases of these updates. Each update
problem is comparatively assessed from the computational complexity viewpoint.
The result of this paper provides a uniform framework for different types of
knowledge base updates, and each update is computed using existing procedures
of logic programming.
