Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Description Logics in Ontology Applications

  • Conference paper
Book cover Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3702))

Abstract

Description Logics (DLs) are a family of logic based knowledge representation formalisms. Although they have a range of applications (e.g., configuration and information integration), they are perhaps best known as the basis for widely used ontology languages such as OWL (now a W3C recommendation). This decision was motivated by a requirement that key inference problems be decidable, and that it should be possible to provide reasoning services to support ontology design and deployment. Such reasoning services are typically provided by highly optimised implementations of tableaux decision procedures; these have proved to be effective in applications in spite of the high worst case complexity of key inference problems. The increasing use of DL based ontologies in areas such as e-Science and the Semantic Web is, however, already stretching the capabilities of existing DL systems, and brings with it a range of research challenges.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Calvanese, D., De Giacomo, G., Lenzerini, M., Nardi, D., Rosati, R.: Description logic framework for information integration. In: Proc. of the 6th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 1998), pp. 2–13 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Calvanese, D., De Giacomo, G., Lenzerini, M.: On the decidability of query containment under constraints. In: Proc. of the 17th ACM SIGACT SIGMOD SIGART Symp. on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 1998), pp. 149–158 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Horrocks, I., Tessaris, S., Sattler, U., Tobies, S.: How to decide query containment under constraints using a description logic. In: Proc. of the 7th Int. Workshop on Knowledge Representation meets Databases (KRDB 2000) CEUR (2000), http://ceur-ws.org/

  4. Horrocks, I., Patel-Schneider, P.F., van Harmelen, F.: From \(\mathcal{SHIQ}\) and RDF to OWL: The making of a web ontology language. J. of Web Semantics 1, 7–26 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Knublauch, H., Fergerson, R., Noy, N., Musen, M.: The protégé OWL plugin: An open development environment for semantic web applications. In: McIlraith, S.A., Plexousakis, D., van Harmelen, F. (eds.) ISWC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3298, pp. 229–243. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Liebig, T., Noppens, O.: Ontotrack: Combining browsing and editing with reasoning and explaining for OWL Lite ontologies. In: McIlraith, S.A., Plexousakis, D., van Harmelen, F. (eds.) ISWC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3298, pp. 244–258. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Rector, A.L., Nowlan, W.A., Glowinski, A.: Goals for concept representation in the galen project. In: Proc. of the 17th Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC 1993), Washington DC, USA, pp. 414–418 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Visser, U., Stuckenschmidt, H., Schuster, G., Vögele, T.: Ontologies for geographic information processing. Computers in Geosciences (to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Oberle, D., Sabou, M., Richards, D.: An ontology for semantic middleware: extending daml-s beyond web-services. In: Proceedings of ODBASE 2003 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Wroe, C., Goble, C.A., Roberts, A., Greenwood, M.: A suite of DAML+OIL ontologies to describe bioinformatics web services and data. Int. J. of Cooperative Information Systems (2003); Special Issue on Bioinformatics

    Google Scholar 

  11. Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., Lassila, O.: The semantic Web. Scientific American 284, 34–43 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Paolucci, M., Ankolekar, A., Srinivasan, N., Sycara, K.: The DAML Services Coalition: DAML-S: Web service description for the semantic web. In: Fensel, D., Sycara, K., Mylopoulos, J. (eds.) ISWC 2003. LNCS, vol. 2870, pp. 290–305. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Uschold, M., King, M., Moralee, S., Zorgios, Y.: The enterprise ontology. Knowledge Engineering Review 13 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Stevens, R., Goble, C., Horrocks, I., Bechhofer, S.: Building a bioinformatics ontology using OIL. IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine 6, 135–141 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Rector, A., Horrocks, I.: Experience building a large, re-usable medical ontology using a description logic with transitivity and concept inclusions. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontological Engineering, AAAI Spring Symposium (AAAI 1997). AAAI Press, Menlo Park (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Spackman, K.: Managing clinical terminology hierarchies using algorithmic calculation of subsumption: Experience with SNOMED-RT. J. of the Amer. Med. Informatics Ass. (2000); Fall Symposium Special Issue

    Google Scholar 

  17. Emmen, A.: The grid needs ontologies—onto-what? (2002), http://www.hoise.com/primeur/03/articles/monthly/AE-PR-02-03-7.html

  18. Tuecke, S., Czajkowski, K., Foster, I., Frey, J., Graham, S., Kesselman, C., Vanderbilt, P.: Grid service specification (draft). GWD-I draft, GGF Open Grid Services Infrastructure Working Group (2002), http://www.globalgridforum.org/

  19. Foster, I., Kesselman, C., Nick, J., Tuecke, S.: The physiology of the grid: An open grid services architecture for distributed systems integration (2002), http://www.globus.org/research/papers/ogsa.pdf

  20. Wolstencroft, K., McEntire, R., Stevens, R., Tabernero, L., Brass, A.: Constructing Ontology-Driven Protein Family Databases. Bioinformatics 21, 1685–1692 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Horrocks, I., Tessaris, S.: Querying the semantic web: a formal approach. In: Horrocks, I., Hendler, J. (eds.) ISWC 2002, vol. 2342, pp. 177–191. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Horrocks, I., Sattler, U., Tobies, S.: Practical reasoning for expressive description logics. In: Ganzinger, H., McAllester, D., Voronkov, A. (eds.) LPAR 1999, vol. 1705, pp. 161–180. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: A tableaux decision procedure for \(\mathcal{SHOIQ}\). In: Proc. of the 19th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI 2005 (2005) (to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Baader, F., Calvanese, D., McGuinness, D., Nardi, D., Patel-Schneider, P.F. (eds.): The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. Baader, F., Hanschke, P.: A schema for integrating concrete domains into concept languages. In: Proc. of the 12th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 1991), pp. 452–457 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Blackburn, P., Seligman, J.: Hybrid languages. J. of Logic, Language and Information 4, 251–272 (1995)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: Ontology reasoning in the \(\mathcal{SHOQ}\)(D) description logic. In: Proc. of the 17th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2001), pp. 199–204 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Donini, F.M., Lenzerini, M., Nardi, D., Nutt, W.: The complexity of concept languages. Information and Computation 134, 1–58 (1997)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  29. Baader, F., Franconi, E., Hollunder, B., Nebel, B., Profitlich, H.J.: An empirical analysis of optimization techniques for terminological representation systems or: Making KRIS get a move on. Applied Artificial Intelligence. Special Issue on Knowledge Base Management 4, 109–132 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Horrocks, I.: The FaCT system. In: de Swart, H. (ed.) TABLEAUX 1998. LNCS, vol. 1397, pp. 307–312. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  31. Patel-Schneider, P.F.: DLP system description. In: Proc. of the 1998 Description Logic Workshop (DL 1998), CEUR Electronic Workshop Proceedings, pp. 87–89 (1998), http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-11/

  32. Haarslev, V., Möller, R.: RACER system description. In: Goré, R.P., Leitsch, A., Nipkow, T. (eds.) IJCAR 2001. LNCS, vol. 2083, pp. 701–705. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Pan, J.Z.: Description Logics: Reasoning Support for the Semantic Web. PhD thesis, University of Manchester (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Horrocks, I., Sattler, U., Tobies, S.: Practical reasoning for very expressive description logics. J. of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logic 8, 239–264 (2000)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  35. Bresciani, P., Franconi, E., Tessaris, S.: Implementing and testing expressive description logics: Preliminary report. In: Proc. of the 1995 Description Logic Workshop (DL 1995), pp. 131–139 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Horrocks, I.: Using an expressive description logic: FaCT or fiction? In: Proc. of the 6th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 1998), pp. 636–647 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Patel-Schneider, P.F.: DLP. In: Proc. of the 1999 Description Logic Workshop (DL 1999), CEUR Electronic Workshop Proceedings, pp. 9–13 (1999), http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-22/

  38. Horrocks, I., Patel-Schneider, P.F.: Optimizing description logic subsumption. J. of Logic and Computation 9, 267–293 (1999)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  39. Horrocks, I., Tobies, S.: Reasoning with axioms: Theory and practice. In: Proc. of the 7th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2000), pp. 285–296 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Baker, A.B.: Intelligent Backtracking on Constraint Satisfaction Problems: Experimental and Theoretical Results. PhD thesis, University of Oregon (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Oppacher, F., Suen, E.: HARP: A tableau-based theorem prover. J. of Automated Reasoning 4, 69–100 (1988)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  42. Protégé (2003), http://protege.stanford.edu/

  43. Wroe, C., Stevens, R., Goble, C.A., Ashburner, M.: A methodology to migrate the Gene Ontology to a description logic environment using DAML+OIL. In: Proc. of the 8th Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Rogers, J.E., Roberts, A., Solomon, W.D., van der Haring, E., Wroe, C.J., Zanstra, P.E., Rector, A.L.: GALEN ten years on: Tasks and supporting tools. In: Proc. of MEDINFO 2001, pp. 256–260 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  45. Horrocks, I., Li, L., Turi, D., Bechhofer, S.: The instance store: DL reasoning with large numbers of individuals. In: Proc. of the 2004 Description Logic Workshop (DL 2004), pp. 31–40 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Bechhofer, S., Horrocks, I., Turi, D.: The OWL instance store: System description. In: Nieuwenhuis, R. (ed.) CADE 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3632, pp. 177–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  47. Hustadt, U., Motik, B., Sattler, U.: Reducing SHIQ-description logic to disjunctive datalog programs. In: Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2004), pp. 152–162 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Motik, B., Sattler, U., Studer, R.: Query answering for OWL-DL with rules. In: McIlraith, S.A., Plexousakis, D., van Harmelen, F. (eds.) ISWC 2004, vol. 3298, pp. 549–563. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  49. Rector, A.: Analysis of propagation along transitive roles: Formalisation of the galen experience with medical ontologies. In: Proc. of DL 2002, CEUR (2002), http://ceur-ws.org/

  50. Schulz, S., Hahn, U.: Parts, locations, and holes - formal reasoning about anatomical structures. In: Quaglini, S., Barahona, P., Andreassen, S. (eds.) AIME 2001. LNCS, vol. 2101, p. 293. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  51. Tsarkov, D., Riazanov, A., Bechhofer, S., Horrocks, I.: Using Vampire to reason with OWL. In: McIlraith, S.A., Plexousakis, D., van Harmelen, F. (eds.) ISWC 2004. LNCS, vol. 3298, pp. 471–485. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  52. Eiter, T., Lukasiewicz, T., Schindlauer, R., Tompits, H.: Combining answer set programming with description logics for the semantic web. In: Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2004), pp. 141–151. Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  53. Rosati, R.: On the decidability and complexity of integrating ontologies and rules. J. of Web Semantics 3, 61–73 (2005)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  54. Schlobach, S., Cornet, R.: Explanation of terminological reason-ing: A preliminary report. In: Proc. of the 2003 Description Logic Workshop, DL 2003 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  55. McGuinness, D.L.: Explaining Reasoning in Description Logics. PhD thesis, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  56. Borgida, A., Franconi, E., Horrocks, I.: Explaining \(\mathcal{ALC}\) subsumption. In: Proc. of the 14th Eur. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2000 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  57. Baader, F., Küsters, R., Borgida, A., McGuinness, D.L.: Matching in description logics. J. of Logic and Computation 9, 411–447 (1999)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  58. Brandt, S., Turhan, A.Y.: Using non-standard inferences in description logics — what does it buy me? In: Proc. of KI 2001 Workshop on Applications of Description Logics (KIDLWS 2001). CEUR, vol. 44 (2001), http://ceur-ws.org/

  59. Küsters, R.: Non-Standard Inferences in Description Logics. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2100. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  60. Brandt, S., Küsters, R., Turhan, A.Y.: Approximation and difference in description logics. In: Proc. of the 8th Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2002), pp. 203–214 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Ian Horrocks

Authors
  1. Ian Horrocks
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Koblenz-Landau,  

    Bernhard Beckert

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Horrocks, I. (2005). Description Logics in Ontology Applications. In: Beckert, B. (eds) Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods. TABLEAUX 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3702. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11554554_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11554554_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28931-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31822-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation