Foundations of Instance Level Updates in Expressive Description Logics

In description logic (DL), ABoxes are used for describing the state of affairs in an application domain. We consider the problem of updating ABoxes when the state changes, assuming that update information is described at an atomic level, i.e., in terms of possibly negated ABox assertions that involve only atomic concepts and roles. We analyze such basic ABox updates in several standard DLs, in particular addressing questions of expressibility and succinctness: can updated ABoxes always be expressed in the DL in which the original ABox was formulated and, if so, what is the size of the updated ABox? It turns out that DLs have to include nominals and the ‘@’ constructor of hybrid logic for updated ABoxes to be expressible, and that this still holds when updated ABoxes are approximated. Moreover, the size of updated ABoxes is exponential in the role depth of the original ABox and the size of the update. We also show that this situation improves when updated ABoxes are allowed to contain additional auxiliary symbols. Then, DLs only need to include nominals for updated ABoxes to exist, and the size of updated ABoxes is polynomial in the size of both the original ABox and the update

Query inseparability for ALC ontologies

We investigate the problem whether two ALC ontologies are indistinguishable (or inseparable) by means of queries in a given signature, which is fundamental for ontology engineering tasks such as ontology versioning, modularisation, update, and forgetting. We consider both knowledge base (KB) and TBox inseparability. For KBs, we give model-theoretic criteria in terms of (finite partial) homomorphisms and products and prove that this problem is undecidable for conjunctive queries (CQs), but 2ExpTime-complete for unions of CQs (UCQs). The same results hold if (U)CQs are replaced by rooted (U)CQs, where every variable is connected to an answer variable. We also show that inseparability by CQs is still undecidable if one KB is given in the lightweight DL EL and if no restrictions are imposed on the signature of the CQs. We also consider the problem whether two ALC TBoxes give the same answers to any query over any ABox in a given signature and show that, for CQs, this problem is undecidable, too. We then develop model-theoretic criteria for HornALC TBoxes and show using tree automata that, in contrast, inseparability becomes decidable and 2ExpTime-complete, even ExpTime-complete when restricted to (unions of) rooted CQs