A classification of ontology modification

Abstract

Recent research in ontologies and descriptions logics has focused on compromising between expressiveness and reasoning ability, with many other issues being neglected. One major issue that has been neglected is how one should go about in modifying ontologies as inconsistency arises. The central concern of this problem is therefore to determine the most rational way of modifying ontologies, such that no extra knowledge would be retained in or retracted from the knowledge base. The purpose of this paper is to outline the complexities in this and to present some insights into the problem of ontology modification. Description logic (DL) is used in this paper as the underlying logic for the representation of ontology, and ontology modification is performed based on this logic. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.