OWL DL vs. OWL flight: conceptual modeling and reasoning for the semantic Web

ABSTRACT

The Semantic Web languages RDFS and OWL have been around for some time now. However, the presence of these languages has not brought the breakthrough of the Semantic Web the creators of the languages had hoped for. OWL has a number of problems in the area of interoperability and usability in the context of many practical application scenarios which impede the connection to the Software Engineering and Database communities. In this paper we present OWL Flight, which is loosely based on OWL, but the semantics is grounded in Logic Programming rather than Description Logics, and it borrows the constraint-based modeling style common in databases. This results in different types of modeling primitives and enforces a different style of ontology modeling. We analyze the modeling paradigms of OWL DL and OWL Flight, as well as reasoning tasks supported by both languages. We argue that different applications on the Semantic Web require different styles of modeling and thus both types of languages are required for the Semantic Web.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.4 Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods
          Subjects: Representation languages

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software

General Terms:
Languages, Standardization

Keywords:
description logics, logic programming, ontologies, semantic Web