On the Semantics of Linking and Importing in Modular Ontologies

A paper written by Vasant Honavar, Doina Caragea and Jie Bao. It was presented at the ISWC2006.

[edit] Abstract

Modular ontology languages, such as Distributed Description Logics (DDL), E-connections and Package-based Description Logics (P-DL) offer two broad classes of approaches to connect multiple ontol- ogy modules: use of mappings or linkings between ontology modules e.g., DDL and E-connections; and the use of importing e.g., P-DL. The major difference between the two approaches is on the usage of terms" at the syntactic level, and local model disjointness at the semantic level. We compare the semantics of linking in DDL, E-connections, and import- ing in P-DL within the Distributed First Order Logics (DFOL) frame- work. Our investigation shows that the domain disjointness assumption adopted by the linking approach leads to several semantic di\pmculties.We explore the possibility of avoiding some of the semantic di\pmculties of cur- rent modular ontology language proposals using the importing approach to linking ontology modules.

The schedule for this talk can be found in the conference programme and a linked list of all talks is provided in the article on ISWC2006 papers. This article has originally been created from the RDF metadata for ISWC 2006.