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OTM Confederated International Conferences "On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems"

OTM 2008: On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2008 pp 1440–1457Cite as

Explanation in the DL-Lite Family of Description Logics

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 5332))

Abstract

In ontology-based data access (OBDA), access to (multiple) incomplete data sources is mediated by a conceptual layer constituted by an ontology. In such a setting, to correctly compute answers to queries, it is necessary to perform complex reasoning over the constraints expressed by the ontology. We consider the case of ontologies expressed in DL − Lite, a family of DLs that, in the context of OBDA, provide an optimal tradeoff between expressive power and computational complexity of reasoning; notably conjunctive query answering is LOGSPACE in the size of the data. However, query answering with reasoning comes at a price: the justification of the presence of tuples in answers is no longer trivial, and requires explanation. In this paper, we characterize reasoning in DL − Lite, through deduction rules for building proofs, and we provide several novel contributions: (i) For standard ontology level reasoning, explanation is relatively simple, and our contribution comes mainly from a novel focus on brevity of proofs. (ii) Motivated by the use of DL − Lite for OBDA, we analyze and provide explanation for reasoning in finite models. (iii) We provide a facility for the explanation of an answer to a conjunctive query over a DL − Lite ontology. This algorithm is able to exploit the relational query engine to extract from the data the information necessary for finding the explanation more efficiently, and thus scales to large data sets. The presented approach has been implemented in a prototype for constructing explanations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, Rutgers University, USA

    Alexander Borgida

  2. Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Diego Calvanese & Mariano Rodriguez-Muro

Authors
  1. Alexander Borgida
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  2. Diego Calvanese
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  3. Mariano Rodriguez-Muro
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. STARLab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB),, Bldg G/10, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Robert Meersman

  2. School of Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT University, Bld 10.10, 376-392 Swanston Street, VIC 3001, Melbourne,, Australia

    Zahir Tari

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Borgida, A., Calvanese, D., Rodriguez-Muro, M. (2008). Explanation in the DL-Lite Family of Description Logics. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2008. OTM 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5332. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88873-4_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88873-4_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-88872-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-88873-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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