Univ., Diss.--Frankfurt am Main, 2003. / Literaturverz. S. [159] - 163.

The problem of rewriting a concept given terminology can informally be stated as follows: given a terminology T (i.e., a set of concept definitions) and a concept description C that does not contain concept names defined in T, can this description be rewritten into a 'related better' description E by using (some of) the names defined in T? In this paper, we first introduce a general framework for the rewriting problem in description logics, and then concentrate on one specific instance of the framework, namely the minimal rewriting problem (where 'better' means shorter, and 'related' means equivalent). We investigate the complexity of the decision problem induced by the minimal rewriting problem for the languages FL₀, ALN, ALE and ALC, and then introduce an algorithm for computing (minimal) rewritings for the languages ALE and ALN. Finally, we sketch other interesting instances of the framework. Our interest for the minimal rewriting problem stems from the fact that algorithms for non-standard inferences, such as computing least common subsumers and matchers, usually produce concept descriptions not containing defined names. Consequently, these descriptions are rather large and hard to read and comprehend. First experiments in a chemical process engineering application show that rewriting can reduce the size of concept descriptions optained as least common subsumers by almost two orders of magnitude. / This is a revised version of LTCS-Report 99-12 containing revised proofs of the technical results. / An abridged version of the original report appeared in the Procedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'2000).

Axiom pinpointing has been introduced in description logics (DLs) to help the user to understand the reasons why consequences hold and to remove unwanted consequences by computing minimal (maximal) subsets of the knowledge base that have (do not have) the consequence in question. The pinpointing algorithms described in the DL literature are obtained as extensions of the standard tableau-based reasoning algorithms for computing consequences from DL knowledge bases. Although these extensions are based on similar ideas, they are all introduced for a particular tableau-based algorithm for a particular DL. The purpose of this paper is to develop a general approach for extending a tableau-based algorithm to a pinpointing algorithm. This approach is based on a general definition of „tableau algorithms,' which captures many of the known tableau-based algorithms employed in DLs, but also other kinds of reasoning procedures.

In a previous ICFCA paper we have shown that, in the Description Logics EL and ELgfp, the set of general concept inclusions holding in a finite model always has a finite basis. In this paper, we address the problem of how to compute this basis efficiently, by adapting methods from formal concept analysis.

Action formalisms based on description logics (DLs) have recently been introduced as decidable fragments of well-established action theories such as the Situation Calculus and the Fluent Calculus. However, existing DL action formalisms fail to include general TBoxes, which are the standard tool for formalising ontologies in modern description logics. We define a DL action formalism that admits general TBoxes, propose an approach to addressing the ramification problem that is introduced in this way, and perform a detailed investigation of the decidability and computational complexity of reasoning in our formalism.

We identify a general property of concrete domains that is sufficient for proving decidability of DLs equipped with them and GCIs. We show that some useful concrete domains, such as temporal one based on the Allen relations and a spatial one based on the RCC-8 relations, have this property. Then, we present a tableau algorithm for reasoning in DLs equipped with such concrete domains.

Recently, it was shown for the DL EL that subsumption and instance problem w.r.t. cyclic terminologies can be decided in polynomial time. In this paper, we show that both problems remain tractable even when admitting general concept inclusion axioms and simple role inclusion axioms.

Recently, it has been shown that the small DL EL, which allows for conjunction and existential restrictions, has better algorithmic properties than its counterpart FL₀, which allows for conjunction and value restrictions. Whereas the subsumption problem in FL₀ becomes already intractable in the presence of aclyc TBoxes, it remains tractable in EL even w.r.t. general concept inclusion axioms (GCIs). On the one hand, we will extend the positive result for EL by identifying a set of expressive means that can be added to EL without sacrificing tractability. On the other hand, we will show that basically all other additions of typical DL constructors to EL with GCIs make subsumption intractable, and in most cases even EXPTIME-complete. In addition, we will show that subsumption in FL₀ with GCIs is EXPTIME-complete.

The tableau algorithm implemented in the FaCT knowledge representation system decides satisfiability and subsumption in SHIQ, a very expressive description logic providing, e.g., inverse and transitive roles, number restrictions, and general axioms. Intuitively, the algorithm searches for a tree-shaped abstraction of a model. To ensure termination of this algorithm without comprimising correctness, it stops expanding paths in the search tree using a so-called 'double-blocking' condition.

Unification in the Description Logic (DL) FL₀ is known to be ExpTimecomplete, and of unification type zero. We investigate in this paper whether a lower complexity of the unification problem can be achieved by either syntactically restricting the role depth of concepts or semantically restricting the length of role paths in interpretations. We show that the answer to this question depends on whether the number formulating such a restriction is encoded in unary or binary: for unary coding, the complexity drops from ExpTime to PSpace. As an auxiliary result, which is however also of interest in its own right, we prove a PSpace-completeness result for a depth-restricted version of the intersection emptiness problem for deterministic root-to-frontier tree automata. Finally, we show that the unification type of FL₀ improves from type zero to unitary (finitary) for unification without (with) constants in the restricted setting.