Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1–5Cite as

Description Logics

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:

  • 63 Accesses

Synonyms

Concept languages; KL-ONE style languages; Terminologic languages

Definition

Description Logics (DLs) are a family of knowledge representation languages providing features for defining and describing concepts. The associated formal logics answer such questions as “ Is concept C or knowledge base T consistent?” and “Is concept A more specific than (subsumed by) concept B?”

DLs view the world as being populated by individuals, grouped into classes (“concepts”), and related by binary relationships (“roles”). DLs define concepts recursively starting from atomic identifiers by using concept and role constructors. A key characteristic of every DL’s expressiveness is therefore the set of constructors it supports. The collection of constructors considered has been determined empirically, by experience with a variety of tasks in Natural Language processing and other subfields of Artificial Intelligence. Considerable research has been devoted to finding the complexity of reasoning with...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Recommended Reading

  1. Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness DL, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider PF. The description logic handbook: theory, implementation, and applications. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2003.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Berardi D, Calvanese D, De Giacomo G. Reasoning on UML class diagrams. Artif Intell J. 2005;168(1–2):70–118. MATHMathSciNet

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Borgida A. Description logics in data management. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 1995;7(5):671–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Brachman RJ. What’s in a concept: structural foundations for semantic networks. Int J Man Mach Stud. 1997;9(2):127–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Brachman RJ, Levesque HJ. The tractability of subsumption in frame-based description languages. In Proceedings of 4th National Conference on AI; 1984. p. 34–7.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Calvanese D, Lenzerini M, Nardi D. Unifying class-based representation formalisms. J Artif Intell Res. 1999;11:119–240. (JAIR), MathSciNet

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  7. Horrocks I, Tessaris S. A conjunctive query language for description logic aboxes. In Proceedings 12th National Conference on AI; 2000. p. 399–404.

    Google Scholar 

  8. OWL Web Ontology Language Reference. http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/

  9. Toman D, Weddell G. On keys and functional dependencies as first-class citizens in description logics. J Auto Reason. 2008;40(2–3):117–32. MATHMathSciNet

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Alexander Borgida

Authors
  1. Alexander Borgida
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Borgida .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Fac. of IE & Mgmt., Technion-Israel Inst. of Technology, Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Avigdor Gal

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Borgida, A. (2018). Description Logics. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1310-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1310-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation