RDFS with attribute equations via SPARQL rewriting

Abstract

In addition to taxonomic knowledge about concepts and properties typically expressible in languages such as RDFS and OWL, implicit information in an RDF graph may be likewise determined by arithmetic equations. The main use case here is exploiting knowledge about functional dependencies among numerical attributes expressible by means of such equations. While some of this knowledge can be encoded in rule extensions to ontology languages, we provide an arguably more flexible framework that treats attribute equations as first class citizens in the ontology language. The combination of ontological reasoning and attribute equations is realized by extending query rewriting techniques already successfully applied for ontology languages such as (the DL-Lite-fragment of) RDFS or OWL, respectively. We deploy this technique for rewriting SPARQL queries and discuss the feasibility of alternative implementations, such as rule-based approaches.