Ontology reasoning in the SHOQ(D) description logic

Abstract

Ontologies are set to play a key role in the "Semantic Web" by providing a source of shared and precisely defined terms that can be used in descriptions of web resources. Reasoning over such descriptions will be essential if web resources are to be more accessible to automated processes. SHOQ(D) is an expressive description logic equipped with named individuals and concrete datatypes which has almost exactly the same expressive power as the latest web ontology languages (e.g., OIL and DAML). We present sound and complete reasoning services for this logic. 1