Abstract

The semantic web has drawn the attention from both academic and industry. Description Logics (DLs), a family of formal languages for representing knowledge and supporting reasoning about it, is regarded as a suitable tool that supports the semantic web and enables its data to be both machine readable and machine understandable. Recently, several approaches on how to combine description logics with databases were proposed. In this thesis, we propose techniques for connecting databases with description logic reasoners effectively and completely, and describe the design and implementation of LAS (Large Abox Store), a DL application combining Aboxes reasoning and database query processing to perform efficient reasoning for Aboxes containing role assertions. With the goal to provide a user-friendly, scalable, and complete ontology query processor, we designed our system as an additional layer for the description logic reasoner---RACER.