Ontology Approximation in Horn Description Logics

We study the approximation of a description logic (DL) ontology in a less expressive DL, focusing on the case of Horn DLs. It is common to construct such approximations in an ad hoc way in practice and the resulting incompleteness is typically neither analyzed nor understood. In this paper, we show how to construct complete approximations. These are typically infinite or of excessive size and thus cannot be used directly in applications, but our results provide an important theoretical foundation that enables informed decisions when constructing incomplete approximations in practice.