Prof. Dr. Ralf Möller
Software, Technology and Systems Group (STS),
Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH)
Publications
2006
F. Baader, D. Calvanese, G. De Giacomo, P. Fillottrani, E. Franconi, B. Cuenca
Grau, I. Horrocks, A. Kaplunova, D. Lembo, M. Lenzerini, C. Lutz, R. Moeller,
B. Parsia, P. Patel-Schneider, R. Rosati, B. Suntisrivaraporn, and
S. Tessaris.
Formalisms for Representing Ontologies: State of the Art Survey, May
2005.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
In this document we provide a structured overview of formalism for the rep-
resentation of ontologies developed in Logic and Artificial Intelligence, and survey
the state of the art in methods and techniques for automated reasoning studied in
Computational Logic. Since a more general overview of such formalisms has already
been reported as part of the deliverable D01 State of the art survey, here we con-
centrate on a wide family of logics, called Description Logics (DLs). DLs have been
developed over the years in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Logic to rep-
resent formally knowledge about a domain of interest in terms of objects grouped
into classes and relationships between classes. Such formalisms have been often
advocated as the formal foundation of ontologies. Indeed current ontology language
standards such as RDF/RDFS and especially OWL are based on such formalisms.
In this document, we review DLs from several points of view, laying the foundation
of the research that will be developed within the TONES Project.
D. Calvanese, B. Cuenca Grau, G. De Giacomo, I. Horrocks E. Franconi1,
A. Kaplunova, D. Lembo, M. Lenzerini, C. Lutz, D. Martinenghi, R. Moeller,
R. Rosati, S. Tessaris, and A.-Y. Turhan.
Common Framework for Representing Ontologies, July 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
In this document, we present the general framework for the representation of on-
tologies that has been designed within tones as a semantic infrastructure capturing
the diŽerent formalizations of ontologies as well as their services and the diŽerent
contexts in which ontologies are used. Then, we illustrate several meaningful in-
stantiations of the framework through ontology based formalisms that have been
proposed recently in the literature. Some of these instantiations constitute them-
selves signi¯cant contributions in terms of logic-based ontology formalisms that have
been developed within the tones consortium, and that have been presented recently
at high quality scienti¯c venues.
Diego Calvanese, Enrico Franconi, Birte Glimm, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Ian
Horrocks, Alissa Kaplunova, Domenico Lembo, Maurizio Lenzerini, Carsten Lutz,
Ralf Moeller, Riccardo Rosati, Ulrike Sattler, Sergio Tessaris, and
Anni-Yasmin Turhan.
State of the Art Survey Deliverable D01, December 2005.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
Ontologies are formalism whose purpose is to support humans or machines to
share some common knowledge in a structured way. They allow the concepts and
terms relevant to a given domain to be identified and defined in an unambiguous
way. As such, ontologies are seen as the key technology used to describe the semantics
of information at various sites, overcoming the problem of implicit and
hidden knowledge and thus enabling exchange of semantic contents. In this report
we survey the work on ontologies that has been carried out in recent years. In
particular, we first overview the languages that have been proposed for representing
ontologies, and present the work on reasoning over ontologies. We then overview the
work on ontologies from four different points of view: (i) We survey methodologies
for designing and maintaining ontologies, presenting automated tools suitable for
such tasks. (ii) We present languages and architectures for accessing, processing
and in general making use of ontologies. (iii) We presents several approaches for
integrating and merging ontologies by detecting correspondences among them. (iv)
Finally, we present different approaches for making heterogeneous and autonomous
ontologies interoperate, in the sense that the various ontologies are not modified as
an effect of interoperating with the others.
Diego Calvanese, Enrico Franconi, Birte Glimm, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Ian
Horrocks, Alissa Kaplunova, Domenico Lembo, Maurizio Lenzerini, Carsten Lutz,
Ralf Moeller, Riccardo Rosati, Ulrike Sattler, Sergio Tessaris, and
Anni-Yasmin Turhan.
Tasks for Ontology Access, Processing, and Usage, August 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
Research about ontology access, processing, and usage paves the way for realizing
important tasks in future applications requiring well-understood formal representation
formalisms as well as efficient and industrial-strength implementations. In this
report, we summarize the state of the art for most important application tasks of
this kind that use ontologies as their backbone. In addition to a formalization of the
tasks for some of the most important application scenarios, we also report on recent
theoretical and practical advances for their realization that have been achieved as
part of our work in the TONES project.
S. Castano, K. Dalakleidi, S. Dasiopoulou, S. Espinosa, A. Ferrara, G. N. Hess,
V. Karkaletsis, A. Kaya, S. Melzer, R. Möller, S. Montanelli, and
G. Petasis.
Methodology and Architecture for Multimedia Ontology Evolution.
Technical report, BOEMIE Project Deliverable D4.1, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Enrico Franconi (editor), Sergio Tessaris, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Boontawee
Suntisrivaraporn, Carsten Lutz, Ralf Moeller, and Domenico Lembo.
Revised Ontology Task Handbook, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
Based on the review of the state of the art (Deliverable D1), suitable reasoning
and meta-reasoning mechanisms associated to the processing of ontologies have to
be identified. These mechanisms have to be classified according to their applicability
in the various user activities in which ontologies are dealt with.
This version of the ontology task handbook contains the revised proposal for
ontology-based use cases and the associated reasoning and meta-reasoning services,
to be used in the project.
The set of ontology-based tasks underlying the identified use cases lays the basis
for the whole project. The central role of these tasks makes it necessary to assess and
validate their suitability in an early stage. For this purpose the selected tasks have
been tested on small examples that are chosen so that the results of their application
can easily be matched with the expected outcome. Based also on the inputs of the
first industrial advisory team workshop (WP8), the set of ontology-based tasks have
been finalised.
Sofia Espinosa and Ralf Möller.
Cost-efficient web service composition for processes with distributed
retrieval queries: Position paper.
In Proc. of the 2006 International Workshop on Description Logics
DL'06, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Alissa Kaplunova, Atila Kaya, and Ralf Möller.
Experiences with Load Balancing and Caching for Semantic Web
Applications.
In Proc. of the 2006 International Workshop on Description Logics
DL'06, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Alissa Kaplunova, Atila Kaya, and Ralf Möller.
First Experiences with Load Balancing and Caching for Semantic Web
Applications.
Technical report, Institute for Software Systems (STS), Hamburg University of
Technology, Germany, 2006.
See http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/papers/techreports.html.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
In our case study we investigate a server for answering OWLQL
queries with distinguished variables only (henceforth called OWLQL-).
This server acts as a proxy that delegates queries to back-end
DL reasoners that manage the KB mentioned in the query. This report
describes load balancing and caching strategies in order to exploit previous
query results (possibly produced by different users of the local
site) in the presence of incrementally answered OWL-QL queries. In
addition, the effects of concurrent query executions on multiple (external)
inference servers and corresponding transmissions of multiple
result sets for queries are discussed.
C. Lutz, F. Baader, E. Franconi, D. Lembo, R. Möller, R. Rosati,
U. Sattler, B. Suntisrivaraporn, and S. Tessaris.
Reasoning Support for Ontology Design.
In B. Coence Grau, P. Hitzler, C. Shankey, and E. Wallace, editors, OWL:
Experiences and Directions 2006, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
The design of comprehensive ontologies is a serious challenge. Therefore, it is necessary to support the ontology designer by providing him with design methodologies, ontology editors, and automated reasoning tools that explicate the consequences of his design decisions. Currently, reasoning tools are largely limited to the reasoning services (i) computing the subsumption hierarchy of the classes in an ontology and (ii) determining the consistency of these classes. In this paper, we survey the most important tasks that arise in ontology design and discuss how they can be supported by automated reasoning tools. In particular, we show that it is beneficial to go beyond the usual reasoning services (i) and (ii).
Sylvia Melzer and Ralf Möller.
How sensor data interpretation could benefit from description logics:
Position paper.
In Proc. of the 2006 International Workshop on Description Logics
DL'06, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Ralf Möller, Volker Haarslev, and Michael Wessel.
On the Scalability of Description Logic Instance Retrieval.
In Chr. Freksa and M. Kohlhase, editors, 29. Deutsche Jahrestagung für
Künstliche Intelligenz, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.
Springer Verlag, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
Although description logic systems can adequately be
used for representing and reasoning about incomplete information
(e.g., for John we know he is French or Italian), in practical applications
it can be assumed that (only) for some tasks the expressivity
of description logics really comes into play whereas for
building complete applications, it is often necessary to effectively
solve instance retrieval problems with respect to largely deterministic
knowledge. In this paper we present and analyze the main
results we have found about how to contribute to this kind of scalability
problem. We assume familiarity with description logics in
general and tableau provers in particular.
Ralf Möller, Volker Haarslev, and Michael Wessel.
On the Scalability of Description Logic Instance Retrieval.
In Proc. of the 2006 International Workshop on Description Logics
DL'06, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
B. Neumann and R. Möller.
On Scene Interpretation with Description Logics.
In H.I. Christensen and H.-H. Nagel, editors, Cognitive Vision Systems:
Samping the Spectrum of Approaches, number 3948 in LNCS, pages 247–278.
Springer, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Abstract
We examine the possible use of Description Logics as a knowledge representation
and reasoning system for high-level scene interpretation. It is shown that aggregates composed of multiple parts and constrained primarily by temporal and spatial relations can be used to represent high-level concepts such as object configurations, occurrences, events and episodes. Scene interpretation is modelled as a stepwise process which exploits the taxonomical and compositional relations between aggregate concepts while incorporating visual evidence and contextual information. It is shown that aggregates can be represented by concept expressions of a Description Logic which provides feature chains and a concrete domain extension for quantitative temporal and spatial constraints. Reasoning services of the DL system can be used as building blocks for the interpretation process, but additional information is required to generate preferred interpretations. A probabilistic model is sketched which can be integrated with the knowledge-based framework.
S. Petridis, N. Tsapatsoulis, D. Kosmopoulos, Y. Pratikakis, V. Gatos,
S. Perantonis, G. Petasis, P. Fragou, V. Karkaletsis, K. Biatov, C. Seibert,
S. Espinosa, S. Melzer, A. Kaya, and R. Möller.
Methodology for Semantics Extraction from Multimedia Content.
Technical report, BOEMIE Project Deliverable D2.1, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
Anni-Yasmin Turhan, Sean Bechhofer, Alissa Kaplunova, Thorsten Liebig, Marko
Luther, Ralf Moeller, Olaf Noppens, Peter Patel-Schneider, Boontawee
Suntisrivaraporn, and Timo Weithoener.
DIG 2.0 – Towards a Flexible Interface for Description Logic
Reasoners.
In B. Coence Grau, P. Hitzler, C. Shankey, and E. Wallace, editors, OWL:
Experiences and Directions 2006, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)
M. Wessel and R. Möller.
A Flexible DL-based Architecture for Deductive Information Systems.
In G. Sutcliffe, R. Schmidt, and S. Schulz, editors, Proc. IJCAR-06
Workshop on Empirically Successful Computerized Reasoning (ESCoR), pages
92–111, 2006.
Bibtex entry Paper (PDF)