Answering regular path queries mediated by unrestricted [formula omitted] ontologies

Abstract

A prime application of description logics is ontology-mediated query answering, with the query language often reaching far beyond instance queries. Here, we investigate this task for positive existential two-way regular path queries and ontologies formulated in the expressive description logic SQu, where SQu denotes the extension of the basic description logic ALC with transitive roles (S) and qualified number restrictions (Q) which can be unrestrictedly applied to both non-transitive and transitive roles (⋅u). Notably, the latter is usually forbidden in expressive description logics. As the main contribution, we show decidability of ontology-mediated query answering in that setting and establish tight complexity bounds, namely 2ExpTime-completeness in combined complexity and coNP-completeness in data complexity. Since the lower bounds are inherited from the fragment ALC, we concentrate on providing upper bounds. As main technical tools we establish a tree-like countermodel property and a characterization of when a query is not satisfied in a tree-like interpretation. Together, these results allow us to use an automata-based approach to query answering.