DOI:
Abstract:
E-Connections are a robust framework for combining in a decidable way several families of decidable logics, including Description Logics (DLs), Modal Logics, and many logics of time and space. E-Connections have also proved to be useful for supporting modular, distributed modeling such as is becoming common on the Semantic Web. In this paper, we present an extension to E-Connections of DLs that provides more flexibility in the way link properties can be defined and used in a combination of ontologies. We also provide means for defining transitive relations across domains and for simulating some of the expressivity of the transitive closure operator. Finally, we provide a tableau-based decision procedure for two relevant E-Connection languages involving the influential DLs SHIQ, SHOQ and SHIO, which are at the basis of the Web Ontology Language (OWL)