Knowledgebases as Structured Theories

According to the structural paradigm of knowledge representation, knowledgebases are built by organizing facts along the semantic primitives of a conceptual modelling approach. Previous work of the authors has shown how these organizational principles can be brought into the logical view of knowledge representation by defining mechanisms for developing knowledgebases as structured theories. Herein, a formalization is proposed for such organizational principles and for the structure of the resulting knowledge-bases. Conceptual modelling approaches are seen to define criteria for "well formed theories" in a π-institution. Such theories are accorded an explicit structure from which it is possible to have access to its components. The way is thus prepared to support the definition of higher level inference mechanisms able to manipulate the structure of knowledgebases.

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