Logic-based ontology comparison and module extraction, with an application to DL-Lite (Q622105)

The paper, which is an extended version of two previous papers, gives formalizations of five variants of \(\Sigma\)-difference, \(\Sigma\)-entailment and \(\Sigma\)-inseparability and analyzes a framework for signature-based notions of difference, entailment and inseparability between ontologies in the description logics DL-Lite. These notions can be used to compare two versions of an ontology, to check whether importing one ontology into another has (possibly unwanted) side-effects, and to study and define refinements of a given ontology. It is demonstrated that \(\Sigma\)-inseparability can be used as a framework for both module extraction and forgetting. In addition, the computational complexity of deciding our \(\Sigma\)-entailment relations between DL-Lite ontologies is studied and the corresponding decision algorithms are presented. Finally, experimental results of using QBF solvers to decide \(\Sigma\)-inseparability and extract (minimal) modules are given together with a discussion of problems that remain unsolved.