2023

VLDB Journal

Journal year: 2023 | Journal volume: vol. 32 | Journal number: iss. 1

scientific article

english

EN The success of the use of ontology-based systems depends on efficient and user-friendly methods of formulating queries against the ontology. We propose a method to query a class of ontologies, called facet ontologies (fac-ontologies), using a faceted human-oriented approach. A fac-ontology has two important features: (a) a hierarchical view of it can be defined as a nested facet over this ontology and the view can be used as a faceted interface to create queries and to explore the ontology; (b) the ontology can be converted into an ontological database, the ABox of which is stored in a database, and the faceted queries are evaluated against this database. We show that the proposed faceted interface makes it possible to formulate queries that are semantically equivalent to SROIQFac, a limited version of the SROIQ description logic. The TBox of a fac-ontology is divided into a set of rules defining intensional predicates and a set of constraint rules to be satisfied by the database. We identify a class of so-called reflexive weak cycles in a set of constraint rules and propose a method to deal with them in the chase procedure. The considerations are illustrated with solutions implemented in the DAFO system (data access based on faceted queries over ontologies).

15.03.2022

103 - 121

10.1007/s00778-022-00735-3

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00778-022-00735-3

CC BY (attribution alone)

czasopismo hybrydowe

final published version

in press

140.0

4.2 [List 2022]