Query answering in circumscribed OWL2 profiles

Abstract

This paper partially bridges a gap in the literature on Circumscription in Description Logics by investigating the tractability of conjunctive query answering in OWL2’s profiles. It turns out that the data complexity of conjunctive query answering is coNP-hard in circumscribed mathcal {E}{mathscr{L}} and DL-lite, while in circumscribed OWL2-RL conjunctive queries retain their classical semantics. In an attempt to capture nonclassical inferences in OWL2-RL, we consider conjunctive queries with safe negation. They can detect some of the nonclassical consequences of circumscribed knowledge bases, but data complexity becomes coNP-hard. In circumscribed mathcal {E}{mathscr{L}}, answering queries with safe negation is undecidable.