In order to use description logics (DLs) in an application, it is crucial to identify a DL that is sufficiently expressive to represent the relevant notions of the application domain, but for which reasoning is still decidable. Two means of expressivity required by many modern applications of DLs are concrete domains and general TBoxes. The former are used for defining concepts based on concrete qualities of their instances such as the weight, age, duration, and spatial extension. The purpose of the latter is to capture background knowledge by stating that the extension of a concept is included in the extension of another concept. Unfortunately, combining concrete domains with general TBoxes often leads to DLs for which reasoning is undecidable. In this paper, we identify a general property of concrete domains that is sufficient for proving decidability of DLs with both concrete domains and general TBoxes. We exhibit some useful concrete domains, most notably a spatial one based on the RCC-8 relations that have this property. Then, we present a tableau algorithm for reasoning in DLs equipped with concrete domains and general TBoxes.

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Aus dem Abstract: Description logic (DL) ABoxes are a tool for describing the state of affairs in an application domain. In this paper, we consider the problem of updating ABoxes when the state changes. We assume that changes are described at an atomic level, i.e., in terms of possibly negated ABox assertions that involve only atomic concepts and roles. We analyze such basic ABox updates in several standard DLs by investigating whether the updated ABox can be expressed in these DLs and, if so, whether it is computable and what is its size.