Package-based description logics

Abstract

We present the syntax and semantics of a family of modular ontology languages, Package-based Description Logics (P-DL), to support context- specific reuse of knowledge from multiple ontology modules. In particular, we describe a P-DL that allows the importing of concept, role and nominal names between multiple ontology modules (each of which can be viewed as a ontology). supports contextualized interpretation, i.e., interpretation from the point of view of a specific package. We establish the necessary and sufficient conditions on domain relations (i.e., the relations between individuals in different local domains) that need to hold in order to preserve the unsatisfiability of concept formulae, monotonicity of inference, transitive reuse of knowledge across modules. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.