Saturation-Based Decision Procedures For Extensions Of The Guarded Fragment

Magna Cum Laude

We apply the framework of Bachmair and Ganzinger for saturation-based theorem proving to derive a range of decision procedures for logical formalisms, starting with a simple terminological language EL, which allows for conjunction and existential restrictions only, and ending with extensions of the guarded fragment with equality, constants, functionality, number restrictions and compositional axioms of
form S ◦ T Í H. Our procedures are derived in a uniform way using standard saturation-based calculi enhanced with simplication rules based on the general notion of redundancy. We argue that such decision procedures can be applied for reasoning in expressive description logics, where they have certain advantages over traditionally used tableau procedures, such as optimal worst-case complexity and direct correctness proofs.

MPI R024

March

2006