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An ontology for ceramics cataloguing and

related reasoning tasks


Domenico Cantone, Cristiano Longo,
Marianna Nicolosi-Asmundo, and Daniele Francesco Santamaria
University of Catania, Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science
email: {cantone,longo,nicolosi}@dmi.unict.it,
daniele.f.santamaria@gmail.com

Abstract
Semantic web is a vision of the web implementation in which information carries an explicit meaning, so it can be automatically understood, processed, and
integrated by machines. Humans are capable of using the web to carry out tasks
such as reserving a library book, searching for the lowest price for a smartphone,
etc. However, in general machines can not accomplish such tasks without human
guidance, as web pages promote presentation, rather than content, so they can
be easily interpreted by people but not by machines. When semantic content is
attached to web pages, most of the annoying work involved in finding, combining, acting, and reasoning about information on the web can be accomplished
by software agents.
Currently, the main languages to represent knowledge in the semantic web
are the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL 2 Ontology Web
Language. An OWL 2 fragment that trades off some expressive power for the
efficiency of reasoning is called OWL 2 profile. Some important OWL 2 profiles
with efficient dedicated reasoning algorithms are OWL 2 EL (particularly convenient in the case of ontologies with a huge number of classes and properties),
OWL 2 QL (suited for applications with a very large amount of data), and OWL
2 RL (a quite expressive profile admitting several restricted OWL constructs).
OWL reasoners allow one to process OWL ontologies and to infer logical
consequences from sets of asserted facts or axioms. Many reasoners are currently
available such as Pellet [6], Hermit [5], and Fact++ [7] (based on the fragment
SROIQ(D)), Apache Jena [3] (that provides a basic reasoner for RDF), and
Cyc [1](based on a fragment of higher-order logic).
In this note we briefly outline the work developed in [4], namely the definition
of the OWL 2 ontology Ontoceramic for cataloguing ceramics, the analysis of the
classification of Ontoceramic with some of the most widespread OWL reasoners
and of its expressiveness with respect to the principal existing OWL 2 profiles.
Finally we present some plans for future research.
Ontoceramic has been defined in collaboration with archaeological experts as
a first step to overcome the problem of efficiently mechanize the task of correctly
cataloguing ceramics for the purpose of making such knowledge easily retrievable by scientists and researchers in the field. Currently, in fact, classification of

ceramics is performed by using traditional methods like hard-copy archives and


standard digital techniques like relational databases.
The application of semantic web reasoning to Ontoceramic allows one to
carry out many tasks such as comparing different findings by their fragment
composition and specification, or by finding places, or by their measurements,
and so on. In particular, it allows one to classify ceramics by their shape and
type. The latter task is still problematic in the archaeological ambit. In fact,
information systems currently used for handling such data are based on classic
data-storage techniques (i.e., entity-relationship databases) which do not support
a versatile and flexible data-management. Thus, they are usually left to personal,
arbitrary and unshared interpretations, bringing to ambiguous classifications of
data, which in turn hinder the retrieval, circulation, and understanding of artistic
heritage.
The task of classification of Ontoceramic brought to light the limits of each of
the reasoners used for the purpose. For example, we found out that Hermit was
able to reason about all of the constructs occurring in the ontology but it did
not fully support reasoning on data-type operations. Pellet, on the other hand,
was capable to completely reason with Ontoceramic as long as the ontology was
deprived of some of its constructs.
For the purpose of studying and addressing some of the weaknesses of the
reasoners we used, our first step was to analyze the expressiveness of Ontoceramic. Thus, we defined a logical model of Ontoceramic. Since none of the
existing OWL 2 profiles coincides with our model, that is, each existing OWL 2
profile resulted to be much expressive and to not support some of the constructs
occurring in Ontoceramic, we defined a new OWL 2 profile called OWL 2 SS.
Our new profile contains all the features of the logical model of Ontoceramic
that include a wide subset of OWL 2 constructs [9]. A comparison of OWL 2 SS
with the most important OWL 2 profiles can be found in Appendix A.
To ascertain the computational complexity of the reasoning problems of the
OWL 2 SS profile and to define an efficient reasoning algorithm for it, we expressed it in set theoretical terms as a fragment of the four level stratified syllogistic called 4LQS R (Restricted Four Level Quantified Syllogistic), proved to
be decidable in [2]. Thus, we singled out a sub-fragment of 4LQS R , called SSOWL ,
capable to express the profile OWL 2 SS, and adapted to SSOWL the decision procedure described in [2]. It turns out that under certain conditions, for 4LQS R
the satisfiability problem for SSOWL is NP-complete.
In its current form, the decision procedure for SSOWL is not suitable for mechanization. We therefore plan to implement a (hyper) tableau-based decision procedure for SSOWL (also with the aim of addressing some of the weaknesses and
drawbacks observed in existing reasoners) and parallelize it, in order to improve
the performance of reasoning with large data-sets.
To extend the reasoning with some inferences that can be gleaned from the
ontology model itself, a rule language such as Semantic Web Rule Language
(SWRL [8]) would be required. Thus, we plan to include SWRL reasoning in
OWL 2 SS by adopting a rule based language such as Datalog. Finally, we also

intend to extend Ontoceramic so as to enable reasoning on stratigraphic units


and ceramography.

References
1. Cycorp, Inc. Cyc. http://www.cyc.com/.
2. D. Cantone, M. Nicolosi-Asmundo. On the Satisfiability Problem for a 4-level Quantified Syllogistic and Some Applications to Modal Logic. Fundam. Inform., 124(4):
427-448, 2013.
3. HP Lab. Apache jena. http://jena.apache.org/.
4. D. F. Santamaria. A semantic web ontology for ceramics cataloguing and settheoretical representation for owl 2 profiles. Tesi di laura magistrale, University of
Catania, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, 2014.
5. R. Shearer, B. Motik, and I. Horrocks. Hermit: A highly-efficient OWL reasoner. In
Proceedings of the Fifth OWLED Workshop on OWL: Experiences and Directions,
collocated with the 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC-2008), Karlsruhe, Germany, October 26-27, 2008, 2008.
6. E. Sirin, B. Parsia, B. Cuenca Grau, A. Kalyanpur, and Y. Katz. Pellet: A practical
OWL-DL reasoner. J. Web Sem., 5(2):5153, 2007.
7. D. Tsarkov and I. Horrocks. Fact++ description logic reasoner: System description. In Automated Reasoning, Third International Joint Conference, IJCAR 2006,
Seattle, WA, USA, August 17-20, 2006, Proceedings, pages 292297, 2006.
8. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). SWRL: A semantic web rule language.
http://www.w3.org/Submission/SWRL/.
9. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
OWL 2 web ontology language structural specification and functional-style syntax (second edition).
http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/REC-owl2-syntax-20121211/.

Comparison of OWL 2 SS with other OWL 2 profiles


Construct
DataSomeValuesFrom
ObjectHasValue
DataHasValue
ObjectHasSelf
ObjectAllValuesFrom
DataAllValuesFrom
ObjectMaxCardinality
DataMaxCardinality
ObjectMinCardinality
DataMinCardinality
ObjectExactCardinality
DataExactCardinality
ObjectOneOf
DataOneOf
ObjectInsersectionOf

OWL 2 EL OWL 2 QL OWL 2 RL OWL 2 SS


Y
Y
SUB
SUB
Y
N
SUB
SUB
Y
N
SUB
SUB
Y
N
SUB
Y
N
N
SUP
SUP
N
N
SUP
SUP
N
N
SUP,0/1
SUP
N
N
SUP,0/1
SUP
N
N
N
SUB
N
N
N
SUB
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
Y
N
SUB
Y
Y
N
N
Y
Y
SUP
Y
Y

DataIntersectionOf
SubClassOf
DisjointClasses
ObjectUnionOf
DataUnionOf
DisjointUnion
ObjectComplementOf
SameIndividual
DifferentIndividuals
ClassAssertion
ObjectPropertyAssertion
DataPropertyAssertion
NegativeObjectPropertyAssertion
NegativeDataPropertyAssertion
SubObjectPropertyOf
SubDataPropertyOf
EquivalentObjectProperties
EquivalentDataProperties
TransitiveObjectProperty
ReflexiveObjectProperty
FunctionalDataProperty
FunctionalObjectProperty
DisjointObjectProperties
DisjointDataProperties
IrreflexiveObjectProperties
InverseObjectProperties
InverseFunctionalObjectProperties
SymmetricObjectProperty
AsymmetricObjectProperty
ObjectPropertyDomain
DataPropertyDomain
ObjectPropertyRange
DataPropertyRange
HasKey
ObjectPropertyChain

Y
Y
Y
N
N
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y

Y
Y
Y
N
N
N
SUP
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
N

Y
Y
SUB
SUB
N
N
SUP
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
SUP
SUP
SUP
SUP
SUP
N

Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
SUP
Y

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