Combining open and closed world reasoning for the semantic web

• Author(s): Knorr, Matthias
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/6702
• Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
• Subject(s): Semantic web; Non-monotonic reasoning; Description logics; Logic programming
• Document Type: Doctoral thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Alferes, José Júlio; Hitzler, Pascal
• Contributor(s): RUN

Description

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Informática

One important problem in the ongoing standardization of knowledge representation languages for the Semantic Web is combining open world ontology languages, such as the OWL-based ones, and closed world rule-based languages. The main difficulty of such a combination is that both formalisms are quite orthogonal w.r.t. expressiveness and how decidability is achieved. Combining non-monotonic rules and ontologies is thus a challenging task that requires careful balancing between expressiveness of the knowledge representation language and the computational complexity of reasoning. In this thesis, we will argue in favor of a combination of ontologies and nonmonotonic rules that tightly integrates the two formalisms involved, that has a computational complexity that is as low as possible, and that allows us to query for information instead of calculating the whole model. As our starting point we choose the mature approach of hybrid MKNF knowledge bases, which is based on an adaptation of the Stable Model Semantics to knowledge bases consisting of ontology axioms and rules. We extend the two-valued framework of MKNF logics to a three-valued logics, and we propose a well-founded semantics for non-disjunctive hybrid MKNF knowledge bases. This new semantics promises to provide better efficiency of reasoning,and it is faithful w.r.t. the original two-valued MKNF semantics and compatible with both the OWL-based semantics and the traditional Well- Founded Semantics for logic programs. We provide an algorithm based on operators to compute the unique model, and we extend SLG resolution with tabling to a general framework that allows us to query a combination of non-monotonic rules and any given ontology language. Finally, we investigate concrete instances of that procedure w.r.t. three tractable ontology languages, namely the three description logics underlying the OWL 2 pro les.

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - grant contract SFRH/BD/28745/2006