On the Interaction between Inverse Features and Path-functional Dependencies in Description Logics

David Toman, Grant E. Weddell

Abstract: We investigate how inverse features can be added to a boolean complete description logic with path-functional dependencies in ways that avoid undecidability of the associated logical implication problem. In particular, we present two conditions that ensure the problem remains EXPTIME-complete. The first is syntactic in nature and limits the form that dependencies may have in argument terminologies. The second is a coherence condition on terminologies that is sufficiently weak to allow the transfer of relational and emerging object-oriented normalization techniques.