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Modular Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in the Semantic Web

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Abstract

Construction of modular ontologies by combining different modules is becoming a necessity in ontology engineering in order to cope with the increasing complexity of the ontologies and the domains they represent. The modular ontology approach takes inspiration from software engineering, where modularization is a widely acknowledged feature. Distributed reasoning is the other side of the coin of modular ontologies: given an ontology comprising of a set of modules, it is desired to perform reasoning by combination of multiple reasoning processes performed locally on each of the modules. In the last ten years, a number of approaches for combining logics has been developed in order to formalize modular ontologies. In this chapter, we survey and compare the main formalisms for modular ontologies and distributed reasoning in the Semantic Web. We select four formalisms build on formal logical grounds of Description Logics: Distributed Description Logics, ℰ-connections, Package-based Description Logics and Integrated Distributed Description Logics. We concentrate on expressivity and distinctive modeling features of each framework. We also discuss reasoning capabilities of each framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Sommarive 18, 38123, Trento, Italy

    Luciano Serafini & Martin Homola

  2. Fac. of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, 84248, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Martin Homola

Authors
  1. Luciano Serafini
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  2. Martin Homola
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Correspondence to Luciano Serafini or Martin Homola .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipto. Informatica e Automazione, Università Roma Tre, Via della Vasca Navale 79, Roma, 00146, Italy

    Roberto de Virgilio

  2. Dipto. Ingegneria e Scienza, Università di Trento, Via Sommarive 14, Povo, 38100, Italy

    Fausto Giunchiglia

  3. Dipto. Elettronica e Informazione (DEI), Politecnico di Milano, Via Ponzio 34/5, Milano, 20133, Italy

    Letizia Tanca

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Serafini, L., Homola, M. (2010). Modular Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in the Semantic Web. In: de Virgilio, R., Giunchiglia, F., Tanca, L. (eds) Semantic Web Information Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04329-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04329-1_8

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