Reasoning with expressive description logics: Theory and practice

Abstract

Description Logics are a family of class based knowledge representation formalisms characterised by the use of various constructors to build complex classes from simpler ones, and by an emphasis on the provision of sound, complete and (empirically) tractable reasoning services. They have a wide range of applications, but their use as ontology languages has been highlighted by the recent explosion of interest in the “SemanticWeb”, where ontologies are set to play a key role. DAML+OIL is a description logic based ontology language specifically designed for use on the web. The logical basis of the language means that reasoning services can be provided, both to support ontology design and to make DAML+OIL described web resources more accessible to automated processes.