Modularizing ontologies for the construction of E - SHIQ distributed knowledge bases

Abstract

Ontology modularization methods aim either to extract modules, or partition ontologies into sets of modules. Each module covers a specific part of the whole that should "make sense", while it preserves additional properties. Ontology modularization may aim at reusability of knowledge, reduction of complexity, efficient reasoning, and tooling support, e.g. for efficient ontology maintenance and evolution. This paper presents a generic framework for the modularization of SHIQ ontologies, towards the construction of distributed E - SHIQ knowledge bases. The aim is to compute decompositions for correct, complete and efficient distributed reasoning. The proposed framework combines locality-based rules with graph-based modularization techniques using a generic constraint problem solving framework. The paper presents experimental results concerning the modularization task. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.