Combining Ontologies with Correspondences and Link Relations: The E-SHIQ
  Representation Framework
  Combining knowledge and beliefs of autonomous peers in distributed settings,
is a ma- jor challenge. In this paper we consider peers that combine ontologies
and reason jointly with their coupled knowledge. Ontologies are within the SHIQ
fragment of Description Logics. Although there are several representation
frameworks for modular Description Log- ics, each one makes crucial assumptions
concerning the subjectivity of peers' knowledge, the relation between the
domains over which ontologies are interpreted, the expressivity of the
constructors used for combining knowledge, and the way peers share their
knowledge. However in settings where autonomous peers can evolve and extend
their knowledge and beliefs independently from others, these assumptions may
not hold. In this article, we moti- vate the need for a representation
framework that allows peers to combine their knowledge in various ways,
maintaining the subjectivity of their own knowledge and beliefs, and that
reason collaboratively, constructing a tableau that is distributed among them,
jointly. The paper presents the proposed E-SHIQ representation framework, the
implementation of the E-SHIQ distributed tableau reasoner, and discusses the
efficiency of this reasoner.
