Extending datatype support in web ontology reasoning

Abstract

The Semantic Web is a vision of the next generation Web, in which semantic markup will make Web resources more accessible to automatic processes. Description Logics (DLs) are of crucial importance to the development of the Semantic Web, where their role is to provide formal underpinnings and automated reasoning services for Semantic Web ontology languages such as DAML+OIL. In this paper, we show how the description logic SHOQ(D), which has been designed to provide such services, can be extended with n-ary datatype predicates and qualified number restrictions with n-ary datatype predicates, to give SHOQ(Dn), and we present an algorithm for deciding the satisfiability of SHOQ(Dn) concepts, along with a proof of its soundness and completeness. The work is motivated by the requirement for n-ary datatype predicates and qualified number restrictions with n-ary predicates in relation to "real world" properties in semantic Web ontologies and applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.