Decidable Reasoning in Terminological Knowledge Representation Systems
<|reference_start|>Decidable Reasoning in Terminological Knowledge Representation Systems: Terminological knowledge representation systems (TKRSs) are tools for designing and using knowledge bases that make use of terminological languages (or concept languages). We analyze from a theoretical point of view a TKRS whose capabilities go beyond the ones of presently available TKRSs. The new features studied, often required in practical applications, can be summarized in three main points. First, we consider a highly expressive terminological language, called ALCNR, including general complements of concepts, number restrictions and role conjunction. Second, we allow to express inclusion statements between general concepts, and terminological cycles as a particular case. Third, we prove the decidability of a number of desirable TKRS-deduction services (like satisfiability, subsumption and instance checking) through a sound, complete and terminating calculus for reasoning in ALCNR-knowledge bases. Our calculus extends the general technique of constraint systems. As a byproduct of the proof, we get also the result that inclusion statements in ALCNR can be simulated by terminological cycles, if descriptive semantics is adopted.<|reference_end|>
@article{buchheit1993decidable,
    title={Decidable Reasoning in Terminological Knowledge Representation Systems},
    author={M. Buchheit, F. M. Donini, A. Schaerf},
    journal={Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Vol 1, (1993),
  109-138},
    year={1993},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/9312101},
    primaryClass={cs.AI}
}