A Semantic Importing Approach to Knowledge Reuse from Multiple Ontologies

摘要

We present the syntax and semantics of a modular ontology language SHOIQP to support context-specific reuse of knowledge from multiple ontologies. A SHOIQP ontology consists of multiple ontology modules (each of which can be viewed as a SHOIQ ontology) and concept, role and nominal names can be shared by "importing" relations among modules. SHOIQP supports contextualized interpretation, i.e., interpretation from the point of view of a specific package. We establish the necessary and sufficient constraints on domain relations (i.e., the relations between individuals in different local domains) to preserve the satisfiability of concept formulae, monotonicity of inference, and transitive reuse of knowledge.