Multi-level Networked Knowledge Base: DDL-Reasoning

This paper describes a new formalism based on multi-level networked knowledge (MLNK), a combination of different ontologies describing heterogeneous and complementary domains aligned with semantic correspondences. Ontology alignments make explicit the correspondences between terms from different ontologies and must be taken into account in reasoning, where two explicit form of correspondences are given: mappings represent predefined relations such as subsumption, equivalence, or disjointness, that have a fixed semantics in all interpretations; as well as links that can relate complementary ontologies by introducing terms defined by experts, and their semantics varies according to interpretations. The proposed MLNK formalism can be transformed into a Distributed System capable of supporting DDL semantics. It permits to apply a contextual reasoning where ontologies and alignments by pairs of ontologies are developed in different and incompatible contexts. The semantic of the proposed formalism is extensively described along with an illustrative example.