Semantic Matchmaking as Non-Monotonic Reasoning: A Description Logic Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal logical framework for semantic matchmaking using Description Logics, employing non-monotonic reasoning techniques to improve the discovery of best offers in open environments like e-marketplaces and web services.

Contribution

It develops Concept Abduction and Concept Contraction as novel non-monotonic inference mechanisms within Description Logics for semantic matchmaking.

Findings

Algorithms obey commonsense properties

Complexity results for inference mechanisms

Implementation used in e-marketplaces and web services

Abstract

Matchmaking arises when supply and demand meet in an electronic marketplace, or when agents search for a web service to perform some task, or even when recruiting agencies match curricula and job profiles. In such open environments, the objective of a matchmaking process is to discover best available offers to a given request. We address the problem of matchmaking from a knowledge representation perspective, with a formalization based on Description Logics. We devise Concept Abduction and Concept Contraction as non-monotonic inferences in Description Logics suitable for modeling matchmaking in a logical framework, and prove some related complexity results. We also present reasonable algorithms for semantic matchmaking based on the devised inferences, and prove that they obey to some commonsense properties. Finally, we report on the implementation of the proposed matchmaking framework, which has been used both as a mediator in e-marketplaces and for semantic web services discovery.