Terminological Knowledge Representation Systems (TKRSs) are tools for designing and using knowledge bases that make use of terminological languages (or concept languages). The TKRS we consider in this paper is of practical interest since it goes beyond the capabilities of presently available TKRSs. First, our TKRS is equipped with a highly expressive concept, language, called ALCNR, including general complements of concepts, number restrictions and role conjunction. Second, it allows one to express inclusion statements between general concepts, in particular to express terminological cycles. We provide a sound, complete and terminating calculus for reasoning in ALCNR-knowledge bases based on the general technique of constraint systems.
['Martin Buchheit', 'Francesco M. Donini', 'Andrea Schaerf']
Decidable reasoning in terminological knowledge representation systems