Description logic, OWL and RDFS: what are the differences?

Question

Can someone explain the relatioships to me between the languages Description Logic, OWL and RDFS?

Answer 1

OWL is a more expressive (ontology) language than RDFS for capturing rich constraints over data (including, but not limited to, RDF). OWL is underpinned by certain description logics which provide the semantics for the language; for example, the OWL 2 DL profile is underpinned by the SROIQ description logic. Such logics allow for the automated inference of implicit statements in the language for various tasks, such as computing a subsumption hierarchy, or correctness checking, as two examples.

See this page from the W3C which covers this in more detail: http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-owl2-overview-20091027/