Skip to main content

Description Logics

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining

Synonyms

Concept languages; Terminological logics; Terminological systems

Glossary

(Logic-Based) Semantics:

A way to interpret any statement in a language; logic-based semantics interprets such a statement using operations in mathematical logic

ABox:

A set of axioms constraining particular individuals

Axiom:

A statement in a DL that asserts certain constraints that have to be satisfied by some concepts, roles and individuals

Class:

Synonymous with concept; usually used (instead of concept) in the context of ontology engineering literature

Classification:

A reasoning problem that, given a collection of concepts, corresponds to find the subsumption relationship between any two concepts; the answer of this problem is a subsumption hierarchy among the concepts

Concept:

A logical expression in a DL corresponding to sets of individuals

DLs:

Description Logics; a family of logic-based KR languages for representing knowledge through assertions about concepts, individuals, and relationships...

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

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 2,500.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 549.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover 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

References

  • Baader F, Hollunder B (1991) KRIS: knowledge representation and inference system. SIGART Bull 2(3):8–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/122296.122298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baader F, Lutz C (2007) Description logic, chap 13. In: Blackburn P, van Benthem J, Wolter F (eds) Handbook of modal logic, studies in logic and practical reasoning, vol 3. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 757–819

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Baader F, Nutt W (2007) Basic description logics, chap 2. In: Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 47–104

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Baader F, Brandt S, Lutz C (2005) Pushing the EL envelope. In: Kaelbling LP, Saffiotti A (eds) IJCAI05, Proceedings of the nineteenth international joint conference on artificial intelligence, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 30–August 5, 2005. Professional Book Center, pp 364–369. http://www.ijcai.org/papers/0372.pdf

  • Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) (2007) The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Baader F, Horrocks I, Lutz C, Sattler U (2017) An introduction to description logics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Brachman RJ (1977) A structural paradigm for representing knowledge. PhD thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Brachman RJ (1979) On the epistemological status of semantic networks. In: Findler NV (ed) Associative networks. Academic, pp 3–50, republished in [Brachman and Levesque 1985], Elsevier, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Brachman RJ, Levesque HJ (1984) The tractability of subsumption in frame-based description languages. In: Brachman RJ (ed) Proceedings of the national conference on artificial intelligence, Austin, TX, August 6–10, 1984. AAAI Press, pp 34–37. http://www.aaai.org/Library/AAAI/1984/aaai84-036.php

  • Brachman RJ, Levesque HJ (eds) (1985) Readings in knowledge representation. Morgan Kauffmann, Los Altos

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Brachman RJ, Schmolze JG (1985) An overview of the KL-ONE knowledge representation system. Cogn Sci 9(2):171–216. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog09021

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brachman RJ, McGuinness DL, Patel-Schneider PF, Resnick LA, Borgida A (1991) Living with CLAS-SIC: when and how to use a KL-ONE-like language. In: Sowa JF (ed) Principles of semantic networks. Morgan Kauffmann, Los Altos, pp 401–456

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Calvanese D, De Giacomo G, Lembo D, Lenzerini M, Rosati R (2007) Tractable reasoning and efficient query answering in description logics: the DL-lite family. J Autom Reason 39(3):385–429. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-007-9078-x

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • De Giacomo G, Lenzerini M (1994) Boosting the correspondence between description logics and propositional dynamic logics. In: Hayes-Roth B, Korf RE (eds) Proceedings of the 12th national conference on artificial intelligence, Seattle, WA, July 31–August 4, 1994, vol 1. AAAI Press/The MIT Press, pp 205–212. http://www.aaai.org/Library/AAAI/1994/aaai94-032.php

  • De Giacomo G, Lenzerini M (1996) Tbox and abox reasoning in expressive description logics. In: Aiello LC, Doyle J, Shapiro SC (eds) Proceedings of the fifth international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR’96), Cambridge, MA, November 5–8, 1996. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 316–327

    Google Scholar 

  • Donini FM (2007) Complexity of reasoning, chap 3. In: Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 105–148

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Donini FM, Lenzerini M, Nardi D, Nutt W (1991a) The complexity of concept languages. In: Allen JF, Fikes R, Sandewall E (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR’91), Cambridge, MA, April 22–25, 1991. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 151–162

    Google Scholar 

  • Donini FM, Lenzerini M, Nardi D, Nutt W (1991b) Tractable concept languages. In: Mylopoulos J, Reiter R (eds) Proceedings of the 12th international joint conference on artificial intelligence, Sydney, Australia, August 24–30, 1991. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 458–465

    Google Scholar 

  • Donini FM, Lenzerini M, Nardi D, Hollunder B, Nutt W, Marchetti-Spaccamela A (1992) The complexity of existential quantification in concept languages. Artif Intell 53(2–3):309–327. https://doi.org/10.1016/0004-3702(92)90076-A

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Franconi E (1998) CRACK. In: Franconi E, Giacomo GD, MacGregor RM, Nutt W, Welty CA (eds) Proceedings of the 1998 international workshop on description logics (DL’98), IRST, Povo – Trento, Italy, June 6–8, 1998, CEUR-WS.org, CEUR workshop proceedings, vol 11. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-11/CRACK.ps

  • Glimm B, Horrocks I, Motik B, Stoilos G, Wang Z (2014) HermiT: an OWL 2 reasoner. J Autom Reason 53(3):245–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-014-9305-1

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Grosof BN, Horrocks I, Volz R, Decker S (2003) Description logic programs: combining logic programs with description logic. In: Hencsey G, White B, Chen YR, Kovács L, Lawrence S (eds) Proceedings of the twelfth international World Wide Web conference, WWW 2003, Budapest, Hungary, May 20–24, 2003. ACM, pp 48–57. https://doi.org/10.1145/775152.775160

  • Haarslev V, Möller R (1999) RACE system description. In: Lambrix P, Borgida A, Lenzerini M, Möller R, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) Proceedings of the 1999 international workshop on description logics (DL’99), Linköping, Sweden, July 30–August 1, 1999, CEUR-WS.org, CEUR workshop proceedings, vol 22. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-22/haarslev.ps

  • Haarslev V, Hidde K, Möller R, Wessel M (2012) The RacerPro knowledge representation and reasoning system. Semantic Web 3(3):267–277. https://doi.org/10.3233/SW-2011-0032

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hayes PJ (1979) The logic of frames. In: Metzing D (ed) Frame conceptions and text understanding. Walter de Gruyter, pp 46–61. Republished in [Brachman and Levesque 1985], Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Hitzler P, Krötzsch M, Rudolph S (2010) Foundations of semantic web technologies. Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, Baco Raton. http://www.semantic-web-book.org/

    Google Scholar 

  • Hollunder B, Nutt W, Schmidt-Schauß M (1990) Subsumption algorithms for concept description languages. In: Aiello, LC (eds), Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI’90, Stockholm, Sweden, 1990. Pitman, London/Boston, pp 348–353

    Google Scholar 

  • Horrocks I (1998) Using an expressive description logic: fact or fiction? In: Cohn AG, Schubert LK, Shapiro SC (eds) Proceedings of the sixth international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning (KR’98), Trento, Italy, June 2–5, 1998. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 636–649

    Google Scholar 

  • Horrocks I, Patel-Schneider PF (2004) Reducing OWL entailment to description logic satisfiability. J Web Semant 1(4):345–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2004.06.003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horrocks I, Sattler U (1999) A description logic with transitive and inverse roles and role hierarchies. J Log Comput 9(3):385–410. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/9.3.385

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Horrocks I, Sattler U, Tobies S (1999) Practical reasoning for expressive description logics. In: Ganzinger H, McAllester DA, Voronkov A (eds) Logic programming and automated reasoning, 6th international conference, LPAR’99, Tbilisi, Georgia, September 6–10, 1999, proceedings, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1705. Springer, pp 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1007/3–540–48242-3 11

    Chapter  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Horrocks I, Kutz O, Sattler U (2006) The even more irresistible SROIQ. In: Doherty P, Mylopoulos J, Welty CA (eds) Proceedings, tenth international conference on principles of knowledge representation and reasoning, Lake District of the United Kingdom, June 2–5, 2006. AAAI Press, Palo Alto, CA, pp 57–67. http://www.aaai.org/Library/KR/2006/kr06-009.php

  • Kazakov Y (2008) RIQ and SROIQ are harder than SHOIQ. In: Brewka G, Lang J (eds) Principles of knowledge representation and reasoning: proceedings of the eleventh international conference, KR 2008, Sydney, September 16–19, 2008. AAAI Press, pp 274–284. http://www.aaai.org/Library/KR/2008/kr08-027.php

  • Kazakov Y, Krötzsch M, Simancik F (2014) The incredible ELK – from polynomial procedures to efficient reasoning with EL ontologies. J Autom Reason 53(1):1–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-013-9296-3

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Krisnadhi A, Maier F, Hitzler P (2011) OWL and rules. In: Polleres A, d’Amato C, Arenas M, Handschuh S, Kroner P, Ossowski S, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) Reasoning web. Semantic technologies for the web of data – 7th international summer school 2011, Galway, Ireland, August 23–27, 2011, Tutorial lectures, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 6848. Springer, pp 382–415. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3–642-23032-5 7

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Krötzsch M (2010) Efficient inferencing for OWL EL. In: Janhunen T, Niemelä I (eds) Logics in artificial intelligence – 12th European conference, JELIA 2010, Helsinki, Finland, September 13–15, 2010. Proceedings, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 6341. Springer, pp 234–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3–642-15675-5 21

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Krötzsch M, Simancik F, Horrocks I (2012) A description logic primer. CoRR abs/1201.4089, http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4089

  • MacGregor RM (1991) Inside the LOOM description classifier. SIGART Bull 2(3):88–92. https://doi.org/10.1145/122296.122309

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Mays E, Dionne R, Weida RA (1991) K-Rep system overview. SIGART Bull 2(3):93–97. https://doi.org/10.1145/122296.122310

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGuinness DL, van Harmelen FC (eds) (2004) OWL web ontology language overview. W3C recommendation 10 Feb 2004. https://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/

  • Minsky M (1981) A framework for representing knowledge. In: Haugeland J (ed) Mind design, The MIT Press, a longer version appears in The psychology of computer vision (1975), republished in [Brachman and Levesque 1985]

    Google Scholar 

  • Motik B, Fokoue A, Horrocks I, Wu Z, Lutz C, Grau BC (eds) (2012) OWL 2 web ontology language profiles, 2nd edn. W3C recommendation 11 Dec 2012. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-profiles/

  • Patel-Schneider PF, Hayes P, Horrocks I (eds) (2004) OWL web ontology language semantics and abstract syntax. W3C recommendation 10 Feb 2004. https://www.w3.org/TR/owl-semantics/

  • Peltason C (1991) The BACK system – an overview. SIGART Bull 2(3):114–119. https://doi.org/10.1145/122296.122314

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quillian M (1967) Word concepts: a theory and simulation of some basic capabilities. Behav Sci 12:410–430. republished in [Brachman and Levesque 1985]

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sattler U, Calvanese D, Molitor R (2007) Relationships with other formalisms, chap 4. In: Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF (eds) The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 149–192

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Schild K (1991) A correspondence theory for terminological logics: preliminary report. In: Mylopoulos J, Reiter R (eds) Proceedings of the 12th international joint conference on artificial intelligence, Sydney, Australia, August 24–30, 1991. Morgan Kaufmann, pp 466–471

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt-Schauß M, Smolka G (1991) Attributive concept descriptions with complements. Artif Intell 48(1):1–26

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Sirin E, Parsia B, Grau BC, Kalyanpur A, Katz Y (2007) Pellet: a practical OWL-DL reasoner. J Web Semant 5(2):51–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2007.03.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steigmiller A, Liebig T, Glimm B (2014) Konclude: system description. J Web Semant 27:78–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2014.06.003

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Tsarkov D, Horrocks I (2006) FaCT++ description logic reasoner: system description. In: Furbach U, Shankar N (eds) Automated reasoning, third international joint conference, IJCAR 2006, Seattle, WA, August 17–20, 2006, proceedings, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4130. Springer, pp 292–297. https://doi.org/10.1007/11814771 26

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • W3C OWL Working Group (2012) OWL 2 web ontology language document overview, 2nd edn. W3C Recommendation 11 Dec 2012. https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/

Recommended Reading

  • [Baader et al 2007] is the standard text for DLs; covers almost all major results in DLs, written in semi-textbook style; requires some basics in mathematical logic

    Google Scholar 

  • [Baader et al 2017] is a principled and thorough textbook formally introducing description logics, including mathematical proofs of properties and algorithm correctness

    Google Scholar 

  • [Hitzler et al 2010] is a introductory level textbook in semantic web technologies which also covers significant amount of DLs material, especially in the context of their application in the Semantic Web

    Google Scholar 

  • [Krötzsch et al 2012] is a text intended as a very first reading on DLs without requiring formal logic background

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Both authors acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) project “TROn – Tractable Reasoning with Ontologies” under the award 1017225 III: Small.

The first author acknowledges the support of Fulbright Indonesia Presidential Scholarship PhD Grant 2010–2013.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adila Krisnadhi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media LLC, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Krisnadhi, A., Hitzler, P. (2018). Description Logics. In: Alhajj, R., Rokne, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_108

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics