Exchanging Description Logic Knowledge Bases

In this paper, we study the problem of exchanging knowledge between a source and a target knowledge base (KB), connected through mappings. Differently from the traditional database exchange setting, which considers only the exchange of data, we are interested in exchanging implicit knowledge. As representation formalism we use Description Logics (DLs), thus assuming that the source and target KBs are given as a DL TBox+ABox, while the mappings have the form of DL TBox assertions. We study the problem of translating the knowledge in the source KB according to these mappings. We define a general framework of KB exchange, and address the problems of representing implicit source information in the target, and of computing different kinds of solutions, i.e., target KBs with specified properties, given a source KB and a mapping. We develop first results and study the complexity of KB exchange for DL-Lite_RDFS, a DL corresponding to the FOL fragment of RDFS, and for DL-Lite_R.