title: Converting Instance Checking to Subsumption: A Rethink for Object Queries over Practical Ontologies.
abstract: Efficiently querying Description Logic (DL) ontologies is becoming a vital task in various data-intensive DL applications. Considered as a basic service for answering object queries over DL ontologies, instance checking can be realized by using the most specific concept (MSC) method, which converts instance checking into subsumption problems. This method, however, loses its simplicity and efficiency when applied to large and complex ontologies, as it tends to generate very large MSCs that could lead to intractable reasoning. In this paper, we propose a revision to this MSC method for DL [Formula: see text], allowing it to generate much simpler and smaller concepts that are specific enough to answer a given query. With independence between computed MSCs, scalability for query answering can also be achieved by distributing and parallelizing the computations. An empirical evaluation shows the efficacy of our revised MSC method and the significant efficiency achieved when using it for answering object queries.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shironoshita
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA.
authors.forename: Ubbo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Visser
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA.
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: John
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA.
authors.forename: Mansur
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kabuka
keywords: Description Logic; Most Specific Concept; Object Query; Ontology; SHI