Using an Expressive Description Logic: FaCT or Fiction?

Description Logics form a family of formalisms closely related to semantic networks but with the distinguishing characteristic that the semantics of the concept description language is formally defined, so that the subsumption relationship between two concept descriptions can be computed by a suitable algorithm. Description Logics have proved useful in a range of applications but their wider acceptance has been hindered by their limited expressiveness and the intractability of their subsumption algorithms. This paper addresses both these issues by describing a sound and complete tableaux subsumption testing algorithm for a relatively expressive Description Logic which, in spite of the logic's worst case complexity, has been shown to perform well in realistic applications.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: KR
• Authors: Ian Horrocks
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, Concept Descriptions, Description Logic, KR 1998, Subsumption Testing Algorithm