Instance-based retrieval by analogy

This work presents a method for retrieval in knowledge bases expressed in Description Logics, founded in the instance-based learning. The procedure implements the disjunctive version space approach exploiting a notion of semantic difference. The method can be employed both to answer to class-membership queries, even though the answers are not logically entailed by the knowledge base, e.g. there are some inconsistent assertions due to heterogeneous sources. In addition, it may also predict/suggest new assertions The method has been implemented and tested in an experimentation, where we show that it is sound and effective.