Distributed Description Logics - Preliminary investigations

Information integration has been, and remains one of the majour challenges of information processing, and is well supported by description logics. We illustrate the need for a more refined approach in those cases where the original sources form a loosely federated information system, with each one wishing to maintain its own independent view of the world. We formalize this using the notion of Distributed Description Logics, where there are {\em directional} mappings between the local sources, including mappings between individuals