# Querying Circumscribed Description Logic Knowledge Bases

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04546 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04546/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Data Complexity of Ontology-Mediated Queries with Closed Predicates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00134/) (2018)
- [Defeasible Inclusions in Low-Complexity DLs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1401.3901/) (2014)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Cost-Based Semantics for Querying Inconsistent Weighted Knowledge Bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20754/) (2024)
- [Minimal Model Reasoning in Description Logics: Don't Try This at Home!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05350/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Circumscription is one of the main approaches for defining non-monotonic description logics (DLs). While the decidability and complexity of traditional reasoning tasks such as satisfiability of circumscribed DL knowledge bases (KBs) is well understood, for evaluating conjunctive queries (CQs) and unions thereof (UCQs), not even decidability had been established. In this paper, we prove decidability of (U)CQ evaluation on circumscribed DL KBs and obtain a rather complete picture of both the combined complexity and the data complexity, for DLs ranging from ALCHIO via EL to various versions of DL-Lite. We also study the much simpler atomic queries (AQs).