Reducing the inferred type statements with individual grouping constructs

Abstract

A common approach for reasoning is to compute the deductive closure of an ontology using the rules specified and to work on the closure at query time. This approach reduces the run time complexity but increases the space requirements. The main reason of this increase is the type and subclass statements in the ontology. Type statements show a significant percentage in most ontologies. Since subclass is a transitive property, derivation of other statements, in particular type statements relying on it, gives rise to cyclic repetition and an excess of inferred type statements. In brief, a major part of closure computation is deriving the type statements relying on subclass statements. In this paper, we propose a syntactic transformation that is based on novel individual grouping constructs. This transformation reduces the number of inferred type statements relying on subclass relations. Thus, the space requirement of reasoning is reduced without affecting the soundness and the completeness. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.