Towards Understanding Reasoning Complexity in Practice

Although the computational complexity of the logic underlying the standard OWL 2 for the Web Ontology Language (OWL) appears discouraging for real applications, several contributions have shown that reasoning with OWL ontologies is feasible in practice. It turns out that reasoning in practice is often far less complex than is suggested by the established theoretical complexity bound, which reflects the worstcase scenario. State-of-the reasoners like FACT++, HERMIT, PELLET and RACER have demonstrated that, even with fairly expressive fragments of OWL 2, acceptable performances can be achieved. However, it is still not well understood why reasoning is feasible in practice and it is rather unclear how to study this problem. In this paper, we suggest first steps that in our opinion could lead to a better understanding of practical complexity. We also provide and discuss some initial empirical results with HERMIT on prominent ontologie

Towards an Infrastructure for the Evaluation of Semantic Technologies

This paper presents and discusses the current development status of the SEALS Platform, a lasting reference infrastructure for semantic technology evaluation. It describes the different entities managed by the platform and the ontology-based model that has been defined to represent them; it also provides an overview of the platform architecture. In addition, it presents the different challenges faced during the development of the SEALS Platform and a use scenario of the platform that supports the execution of evaluation campaigns over semantic technologies

A Keyword-driven approach for generating OWL DL conformance test data

The conformance of semantic technologies has to be systematically evaluated to measure and verify the real adherence of these technologies to the Semantic Web standards. Currente valuations of semantic technology conformance are not exhaustive enough and do not directly cover user requirements and use scenarios, which raises the need for a simple, extensible and parameterizable method to generate test data for such evaluations. To address this need, this paper presents a keyword-driven approach for generating ontology language conformance test data that can be used to evaluate semantic technologies, details the definition of a test suite for evaluating OWL DL conformance using this approach,and describes the use and extension of this test suite during the evaluation of some tools

Datalog Rewritability of Disjunctive Datalog Programs and its Applications to Ontology Reasoning

We study the problem of rewriting a disjunctive datalog program into plain datalog. We show that a disjunctive program is rewritable if and only if it is equivalent to a linear disjunctive program, thus providing a novel characterisation of datalog rewritability. Motivated by this result, we propose weakly linear disjunctive datalog---a novel rule-based KR language that extends both datalog and linear disjunctive datalog and for which reasoning is tractable in data complexity. We then explore applications of weakly linear programs to ontology reasoning and propose a tractable extension of OWL 2 RL with disjunctive axioms. Our empirical results suggest that many non-Horn ontologies can be reduced to weakly linear programs and that query answering over such ontologies using a datalog engine is feasible in practice.Comment: 14 pages. To appear at AAAI-1

Computing Horn Rewritings of Description Logics Ontologies

We study the problem of rewriting an ontology O1 expressed in a DL L1 into an ontology O2 in a Horn DL L2 such that O1 and O2 are equisatisfiable when extended with an arbitrary dataset. Ontologies that admit such rewritings are amenable to reasoning techniques ensuring tractability in data complexity. After showing undecidability whenever L1 extends ALCF, we focus on devising efficiently checkable conditions that ensure existence of a Horn rewriting. By lifting existing techniques for rewriting Disjunctive Datalog programs into plain Datalog to the case of arbitrary first-order programs with function symbols, we identify a class of ontologies that admit Horn rewritings of polynomial size. Our experiments indicate that many real-world ontologies satisfy our sufficient conditions and thus admit polynomial Horn rewritings.Comment: 15 pages. To appear in IJCAI-1

Ontology-Based Data Access Using Rewriting, OWL 2 RL Systems and Repairing

Abstract. In previous work it has been shown how an OWL 2 DL on-tology O can be `repaired ' for an OWL 2 RL system ans|that is, how we can compute a set of axioms R that is independent from the data and such that ans that is generally incomplete for O becomes complete for all SPARQL queries when used with O [ R. However, the initial implementation and experiments were very preliminary and hence it is currently unclear whether the approach can be applied to large and com-plex ontologies. Moreover, the approach so far can only support instance queries. In the current paper we thoroughly investigate repairing as an approach to scalable (and complete) ontology-based data access. First, we present several non-trivial optimisations to the rst prototype. Sec-ond, we show how (arbitrary) conjunctive queries can be supported by integrating well-known query rewriting techniques with OWL 2 RL sys-tems via repairing. Third, we perform an extensive experimental evalua-tion obtaining encouraging results. In more detail, our results show that we can compute repairs even for very large real-world ontologies in a rea-sonable amount of time, that the performance overhead introduced by repairing is negligible in small to medium sized ontologies and noticeable but manageable in large and complex one, and that the hybrid reasoning approach can very eciently compute the correct answers for real-world challenging scenarios.

Structuring Abstraction to Achieve Ontology Modularisation

Large and complex ontologies lead to usage difficulties, thereby hampering the ontology developers’ tasks. Ontology modules have been proposed as a possible solution, which is supported by some algorithms and tools. However, the majority of types of modules, including those based on abstraction, still rely on manual methods for modularisation. Toward filling this gap in modularisation techniques, we systematised abstractions and selected five types of abstractions relevant for modularisation for which we created novel algorithms, implemented them, and wrapped it in a GUI, called NOMSA, to facilitate their use by ontology developers. The algorithms were evaluated quantitatively by assessing the quality of the generated modules. The quality of a module is measured by comparing it to the benchmark metrics from an existing framework for ontology modularisation. The results show that module’s quality ranges between average to good, whilst also eliminating manual intervention

Comparison of reasoners for large ontologies in the OWL 2 EL profile

This paper provides a survey to and a comparison of state-of-the-art Semantic Web reasoners that succeed in classifying large ontologies expressed in the tractable OWL 2 EL profile. Reasoners are characterized along several dimensions: The first dimension comprises underlying reasoning characteristics, such as the employed reasoning method and its correctness as well as the expressivity and worst-case computational complexity of its supported language and whether the reasoner supports incremental classification, rules, justifications for inconsistent concepts and ABox reasoning tasks. The second dimension is practical usability: whether the reasoner implements the OWL API and can be used via OWLlink, whether it is available as Protégé plugin, on which platforms it runs, whether its source is open or closed and which license it comes with. The last dimension contains performance indicators that can be evaluated empirically, such as classification, concept satisfiability, subsumption checking and consistency checking performance as well as required heap space and practical correctness, which is determined by comparing the computed concept hierarchies with each other. For the very large ontology SNOMED CT, which is released both in stated and inferred form, we test whether the computed concept hierarchies are correct by comparing them to the inferred form of the official distribution. The reasoners are categorized along the defined characteristics and benchmarked against well-known biomedical ontologies. The main conclusion from this study is that reasoners vary significantly with regard to all included characteristics, and therefore a critical assessment and evaluation of requirements is needed before selecting a reasoner for a real-life application

A framework for semantic checking of information systems

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresIn this day and age, enterprises often find that their business benefits greatly if they collaborate with others in order to be more competitive and productive. However these collaborations often come with some costs since the worldwide diversity of communities has led to the development of various knowledge representation elements, namely ontologies that, in most cases, are not semantically equivalent. Consequently, even though some enterprises may operate in the same domain, they can have different representations of that same knowledge. However, even after solving this issue and establishing a semantic alignment with other systems, they do not remain unchanged. Subsequently, a regular check of its semantic alignment is needed. To aid in the resolution of this semantic interoperability problem, the author proposes a framework that intends to provide generic solutions and a mean to validate the semantic consistency of ontologies in various scenarios, thus maintaining the interoperability state between the enrolled systems