An Introduction to Description Logic

Knowledge representation is a key area of modern AI, underlying the development of semantic networks. Description logics are languages that represent knowledge in a structured and formally well-understood way: they are the cornerstone of the Semantic Web. This is the first textbook describing this importan new topic and will be suitable for courses aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, or for self-study. It assumes only a basic knowledge of computer science concepts. After generla introducitons motivating and overviewing the subject, the authors describe a simple DL and how it works and can be used, utilizing a running example that recurs through the book. Methods of reasoning and their implementation and complexity are examined, Finally, the authors provide a non-trivial DL knowledge base and use it to illsutrate featues that have been introduced: this base is available for free online access in a form usable by modern ontology editors.