Description Logic Rules

Book excerpt: Ontological modelling today is applied in many areas of science and technology, including the Semantic Web. The W3C standard OWL defines one of the most important ontology languages based on the semantics of description logics. An alternative is to use rule languages in knowledge modelling, as proposed in the W3C’s RIF standard. So far, it has often been unclear how to combine both technologies without sacrificing essential computational properties. This book explains this problem and presents new solutions that have recently been proposed. Extensive introductory chapters provide the necessary background for understanding the goals and challenges of this field, whereas advanced chapters discuss novel solutions in full detail. Enriched knowledge representation languages that are introduced include DL Rules, Horn description logics, and DL+safe Rules. In each of these cases, emphasis is put on finding a favourable trade-off between expressiveness and computational complexity. This naturally leads to the light-weight DL rule language ELP which illustrates that expressive ontological modelling and tractable inferencing can indeed go together. Comprehensive references for further reading are provided throughout the book.