Vivification

Vivification is an operation on a description logic knowledge base to improve performance of a semantic reasoner. Vivification replaces a disjunction of concepts ${\displaystyle C_{1}\sqcup C_{2}\ldots \sqcup C_{n}}$ by the least common subsumer of the concepts ${\displaystyle C_{1},C_{2},\ldots C_{n}}$.

The goal of this operation is to improve the performance of the reasoner by replacing a complex set of concepts with a single concept which subsumes the original concepts.

For example, consider the example given in (Cohen 92): Suppose we have the concept ${\displaystyle {\textrm {PIANIST(Jill)}}\vee {\textrm {ORGANIST(Jill)}}}$. This concept can be vivified into a simpler concept ${\displaystyle {\textrm {KEYBOARD-PLAYER(Jill)}}}$. This summarization leads to an approximation that may not be exactly equivalent to the original.