Re: Implementations of LCS for OWL

It's been a while since I thought about LCS in expressive logics  
(i.e., with disjunction...)

On 28 Apr 2010, at 04:18, Chris Mungall wrote:

> I'm looking for efficient implementations of the LCS (least common  
> subsumer) function for OWL. The function take two classes or class  
> expressions C, D and return the minimal class or class expression  
> that subsumes both. Obviously this excludes UnionOf constructs used  
> in the results. Intersection and existential restrictions would be  
> fine.

Well  you have to be a bit careful since just ruling out explicit  
disjunctions is obviously not sufficient, e.g.,
	De Morgan's could bite you, "not C and not D"
	Axioms can bite you, i.e., you return C but C is defined to be D or E.

So you really have to be careful.

> I see there's a vast literature on this going back to the earliest  
> days of DL systems, but surprisingly little in the way of  
> implementations.

It's typically both expensive to compute, is "Sensible" only for very  
restricted logics, and maybe isn't as immediately useful as it might  
seem.

[snip]
> Ideally the implementation would be open source and well-integrated  
> with current tools (e.g. works with the OWLAPI and/or OWLlink). I'd  
> be willing to work a little on the plumbing, but not for closed  
> source tools.

So my first question is about what you need it for and whether true  
LCS is what you need.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Thursday, 29 April 2010 12:58:43 UTC