14,706 research outputs found
Practical Reasoning for Very Expressive Description Logics
Description Logics (DLs) are a family of knowledge representation formalisms
mainly characterised by constructors to build complex concepts and roles from
atomic ones. Expressive role constructors are important in many applications,
but can be computationally problematical. We present an algorithm that decides
satisfiability of the DL ALC extended with transitive and inverse roles and
functional restrictions with respect to general concept inclusion axioms and
role hierarchies; early experiments indicate that this algorithm is well-suited
for implementation. Additionally, we show that ALC extended with just
transitive and inverse roles is still in PSPACE. We investigate the limits of
decidability for this family of DLs, showing that relaxing the constraints
placed on the kinds of roles used in number restrictions leads to the
undecidability of all inference problems. Finally, we describe a number of
optimisation techniques that are crucial in obtaining implementations of the
decision procedures, which, despite the worst-case complexity of the problem,
exhibit good performance with real-life problems
Converting Instance Checking to Subsumption: A Rethink for Object Queries over Practical Ontologies
Efficiently querying Description Logic (DL) ontologies is becoming a vital
task in various data-intensive DL applications. Considered as a basic service
for answering object queries over DL ontologies, instance checking can be
realized by using the most specific concept (MSC) method, which converts
instance checking into subsumption problems. This method, however, loses its
simplicity and efficiency when applied to large and complex ontologies, as it
tends to generate very large MSC's that could lead to intractable reasoning. In
this paper, we propose a revision to this MSC method for DL SHI, allowing it to
generate much simpler and smaller concepts that are specific-enough to answer a
given query. With independence between computed MSC's, scalability for query
answering can also be achieved by distributing and parallelizing the
computations. An empirical evaluation shows the efficacy of our revised MSC
method and the significant efficiency achieved when using it for answering
object queries
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
Designing Normative Theories for Ethical and Legal Reasoning: LogiKEy Framework, Methodology, and Tool Support
A framework and methodology---termed LogiKEy---for the design and engineering
of ethical reasoners, normative theories and deontic logics is presented. The
overall motivation is the development of suitable means for the control and
governance of intelligent autonomous systems. LogiKEy's unifying formal
framework is based on semantical embeddings of deontic logics, logic
combinations and ethico-legal domain theories in expressive classic
higher-order logic (HOL). This meta-logical approach enables the provision of
powerful tool support in LogiKEy: off-the-shelf theorem provers and model
finders for HOL are assisting the LogiKEy designer of ethical intelligent
agents to flexibly experiment with underlying logics and their combinations,
with ethico-legal domain theories, and with concrete examples---all at the same
time. Continuous improvements of these off-the-shelf provers, without further
ado, leverage the reasoning performance in LogiKEy. Case studies, in which the
LogiKEy framework and methodology has been applied and tested, give evidence
that HOL's undecidability often does not hinder efficient experimentation.Comment: 50 pages; 10 figure
Using Description Logics for RDF Constraint Checking and Closed-World Recognition
RDF and Description Logics work in an open-world setting where absence of
information is not information about absence. Nevertheless, Description Logic
axioms can be interpreted in a closed-world setting and in this setting they
can be used for both constraint checking and closed-world recognition against
information sources. When the information sources are expressed in well-behaved
RDF or RDFS (i.e., RDF graphs interpreted in the RDF or RDFS semantics) this
constraint checking and closed-world recognition is simple to describe. Further
this constraint checking can be implemented as SPARQL querying and thus
effectively performed.Comment: Extended version of a paper of the same name that will appear in
AAAI-201
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