Explaining Axiom Pinpointing

Axiom pinpointing refers to the task of highlighting (or pinpointing) the axioms in an ontology that are responsible for a given consequence to follow. This is a fundamental task for understanding and debugging very large ontologies. Although the name axiom pinpointing was only coined in 2003, the problem itself has a much older history, even if considering only description logic ontologies. In this work, we try to explain axiom pinpointing: what it is; how it works; how it is solved; and what it is useful for. To answer this questions, we take a historic look at the field, focusing mainly on description logics, and the specific contributions stemming from one researcher, who started it all in more than one sense.