Study On Conceptual Modeling With Description Logics

In this thesis, we briefly review the purposes and history of conceptual modeling, and then use the domain of a supermarket to illustrate an approach to conceptual modeling that combines general ideas of object-centered modeling with a look at ontological problems, and DL-specific solutions to them. The ontological issues considered are the nature of individuals, concept specialization, non-binary relationships, materialization, aspects of part-whole relationships.Furthermore, we introduce the basic structure of DLs without cycles systematically. Most of currently implemented DLs such as Pellet and FaCT++ don't allow the existence of cycles in TBox , because the fundamental theoretic problems of cycles are not solved yet.Cyclic definitions are not avoidable in practice and can make definitions more simple and readable.If definitions in a terminological cycles are significant and not so complex, discussing the modeling methods is feasible.This thesis discusses the aspects of modeling approach in ALCN-terminology contains cycles without constructors negation,union, intersection.This thesis is organized as follows:In Chapter 1, we introduce the background of conceptual modeling, abstraction mechanisms that support the development of large models by abstracting details initially, advantage of DLs, and the significance of study on modeling cyclic defitions.In Chapter 2, we use the domain of a supermarket and many concrete examples to illustrate an approach to conceptual modeling that combines general ideas of object-centered modeling with a look at ontological...