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Introduction To Description Logics

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25 views14 pages

Introduction To Description Logics

Uploaded by

neerajnigamboss
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction to

Description Logics
Lecture Outline

 Description Logics: an Overview


 Reasoning in DL
 Different Reasoners
 Suggested Reading list
Overview of Description Logics

 Description Logics (DLs) is the name given to a


set of knowledge representation formalisms
 DLs represent knowledge of an application
domain or world
 Define the relevant concepts of the domain
 Use these concepts to specify properties of objects
and individuals occurring in the domain
 One main characteristic of DLs is their capability
to provide reasoning
 Infer implicit knowledge from that explicitly defined in
the knowledge base.
DL Basics
Concepts (formulae)
E.g., Person, Doctor, HappyParent, (Doctor t Lawyer)
Roles (modalities)
E.g., hasChild, loves
Individuals (nominals)
E.g., John, Mary, Italy
Operators (for forming concepts and roles) restricted so that:
Satisfiability is decidable and, if possible, of low complexity
No need for explicit use of variables
Logical Structures
Atomic Concepts (or Concepts): hasChild
unary predicate symbols (1,NIL)
Person(x), Parent(y) value
Person
restriction
Atomic Roles:
binary predicates, express
relationship between concepts
hasChild(x,y), hasBrother(y,z)
Female Parent
Operators (constructors):
Woman
Person( x)  Female( x)
Woman( y)  Man( y)
Mother IS-a
Individuals
Instances of classes
Mary, John
Knowledge Representation in DL
 Intensional knowledge
 General knowledge about problem domain.

 A woman is a person and a female.


 TBox contains intensional knowledge in form of terminology. It is a
concept definition:
Woman  Person  Female

 Extensional knowledge
 Specific knowledge related to a particular problem.

 Yanika is a female.
 ABox contains assertions about individuals, called membership
assertion:
Female  Person(Yanika)

 A Knowledge Base (KB) is just a TBox and ABox


Architecture of a DL KB

TBox
Description
Reasoning
Language
ABox

Knowledge Base
The Basic Description Language
Negation can only
Syntax Semantic be applied to
>I I (universal concept) atomic concepts
?I ; (bottom concept) Only the top concept is
(: A)I I \ AI (atomic negation) allowed in the scope of an
existential quantification
(C u D)I CI u DI (intersection) over a role
(8 R.C)I {a 2 I | 8 b.(a,b) 2 RI ! b 2 CI} (value restriction)
(9 R.>)I {a 2 I | 9 b.(a,b) 2 RI} (limited exists quantification)
R RI µ I £ I (R is an atomic role)
A AI µ I (A is an atomic concept)
The sublanguage FL is obtained by disallowing atomic negation; and
¡

FL0 is obtained by disallowing limited existential quantification.


DL for the Semantic Web
Web Ontology Language (OWL): W3C
Recommendation on 10 Feb 2004
builds on RDF and RDF Schema and adds more
vocabulary for describing properties and classes

Benefits from many years of DL research


Well defined semantics
Formal properties well understood
Low complexity and decidable
Known reasoning algorithms
Class Constructor
Axioms

Axioms (mostly) reducible to inclusion (v)


e.g. C ´ D iff both C v D and D v C
DL Application Domain
Software engineering
Semantic Web
Medicine
Digital libraries and Web-based information
systems
Suggested Reading

 D. Nardi, R. J. Brachman. An Introduction to Description


Logics, Cambridge University Press, 2002,
 https://www.inf.unibz.it/~franconi/dl/course/dlhb/dlhb-01.pdf (pgs 1-30)
Thanks

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