An Introduction to Description Logic

Description logics (DLs) have a long tradition in computer science and knowledge representation, being designed so that domain knowledge can be described and so that computers can reason about this knowledge. DLs have recently gained increased importance since they form the logical basis of widely used ontology languages, in particular the web ontology language OWL. Written by four renowned experts, this is the first textbook on description logics. It is suitable for self-study by graduates and as the basis for a university course. Starting from a basic DL, the book introduces the reader to their syntax, semantics, reasoning problems and model theory and discusses the computational complexity of these reasoning problems and algorithms to solve them. It then explores a variety of reasoning techniques, knowledge-based applications and tools and it describes the relationship between DLs and OWL.

1. Introduction; 2. A basic DL; 3. A little bit of model theory; 4. Reasoning in DLs with tableau algorithms; 5. Complexity; 6. Reasoning in the eL family of description logics; 7. Query answering; 8. Ontology languages and applications; Appendix A. Description logic terminology; References; Index.

Franz Baader is a professor in the Institute of Theoretical Computer Science at Technische Universität, Dresden.
Ian Horrocks is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford.
Carsten Lutz is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Universität Bremen.
Uli Sattler is a professor in the Information Management Group within the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester.