Abstract
In the context of the Semantic Web or semantic peer to peer systems, many ontologies may exist and be developed independently. Ontology alignments help integrating, mediating or reasoning with a system of networked ontologies. Though different formalisms have already been defined to reason with such systems, they do not consider ontology alignments as first class objects designed by third party ontology matching systems. Correspondences between ontologies are often asserted from an external point of view encompassing both ontologies. We study consistency checking in a network of aligned ontologies represented in Integrated Distributed Description Logics (IDDL). This formalism treats local knowledge (ontologies) and global knowledge (inter-ontology semantic relations, i.e. alignments) separately by distinguishing local interpretations and global interpretation so that local systems do not need to directly connect to each other. We consequently devise a correct and complete algorithm which, although being far from tractacle, has interesting properties: it is independent from the local logics expressing ontologies by encapsulating local reasoners. This shows that consistency of a IDDL system is decidable whenever consistency of the local logics is decidable. Moreover, the expressiveness of local logics does not need to be known as long as local reasoners can handle at least \(\mathcal{ALC}\).
This work has been partly supported by the European integrated project NeOn (IST-2004-507482).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baader, F.: Tableau Algorithms for Description Logics. In: Dyckhoff, R. (ed.) TABLEAUX 2000. LNCS, vol. 1847, pp. 1–18. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Bao, J., Caragea, D., Honavar, V.: On the Semantics of Linking and Importing in Modular Ontologies. In: Cruz, I.F., Decker, S., Allemang, D., Preist, C., Schwabe, D., Mika, P., Uschold, M., Aroyo, L. (eds.) ISWC 2006. LNCS, vol. 4273, pp. 72–86. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Borgida, A., Serafini, L.: Distributed Description Logics: Assimilating Information from Peer Sources. Journal on Data Semantics I 2008, 153–184 (2003)
Euzenat, J., Scharffe, F., Zimmermann, A.: Expressive alignment language and implementation. Deliverable 2.2.10, Knowledge Web NoE (2007), ftp://ftp.inrialpes.fr/pub/exmo/reports/kweb-2210.pdf
Euzenat, J., Shvaiko, P.: Ontology Matching. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Euzenat, J., Zimmermann, A., Freitas, F.: Alignment-based modules for encapsulating ontologies. In: Cuenca-Grau, B., Honavar, V.G., Schlicht, A., Wolter, F. (eds.) Second International Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WOMO 2007), pp. 32–45 (2007)
Kutz, O., Lutz, C., Wolter, F., Zakharyaschev, M.: \(\mathcal{E}\)-connections of abstract description systems. Artificial Intelligence 156(1), 1–73 (2004)
Lenzerini, M.: Data integration: a theoretical perspective. In: Popa, L. (ed.) Proceedings of the Twenty-first ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, June 3-5, 2002, pp. 233–246. ACM Press, New York (2002)
Ohlbach, H.J., Koehler, J.: Modal Logics, Description Logics and Arithmetic Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence 109(1–2), 1–31 (1999)
Zimmermann, A.: Integrated Distributed Description Logics. In: Calvanese, D., Franconi, E., Haarslev, V., Lembo, D., Motik, B., Tessaris, S., Turhan, A.-Y. (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Description Logics DL 2007, pp. 507–514. Bolzano University Press (2007)
Zimmermann, A., Le Duc, C.: Reasoning on a Network of Aligned Ontologies. Technical report, INRIA (March 2008), http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00267808/fr/
Zimmermann, A., Euzenat, J.: Three Semantics for Distributed Systems and their Relations with Alignment Composition. In: Cruz, I.F., Decker, S., Allemang, D., Preist, C., Schwabe, D., Mika, P., Uschold, M., Aroyo, L. (eds.) ISWC 2006. LNCS, vol. 4273, pp. 16–29. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Zimmermann, A., Le Duc, C. (2008). Reasoning with a Network of Aligned Ontologies. In: Calvanese, D., Lausen, G. (eds) Web Reasoning and Rule Systems. RR 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5341. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88737-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88737-9_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-88736-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-88737-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)