1,599 research outputs found
Four Lessons in Versatility or How Query Languages Adapt to the Web
Exposing not only human-centered information, but machine-processable data on the Web is one of the commonalities of recent Web trends. It has enabled a new kind of applications and businesses where the data is used in ways not foreseen by the data providers. Yet this exposition has fractured the Web into islands of data, each in different Web formats: Some providers choose XML, others RDF, again others JSON or OWL, for their data, even in similar domains. This fracturing stifles innovation as application builders have to cope not only with one Web stack (e.g., XML technology) but with several ones, each of considerable complexity. With Xcerpt we have developed a rule- and pattern based query language that aims to give shield application builders from much of this complexity: In a single query language XML and RDF data can be accessed, processed, combined, and re-published. Though the need for combined access to XML and RDF data has been recognized in previous work (including the W3C’s GRDDL), our approach differs in four main aspects: (1) We provide a single language (rather than two separate or embedded languages), thus minimizing the conceptual overhead of dealing with disparate data formats. (2) Both the declarative (logic-based) and the operational semantics are unified in that they apply for querying XML and RDF in the same way. (3) We show that the resulting query language can be implemented reusing traditional database technology, if desirable. Nevertheless, we also give a unified evaluation approach based on interval labelings of graphs that is at least as fast as existing approaches for tree-shaped XML data, yet provides linear time and space querying also for many RDF graphs. We believe that Web query languages are the right tool for declarative data access in Web applications and that Xcerpt is a significant step towards a more convenient, yet highly efficient data access in a “Web of Data”
Querying Schemas With Access Restrictions
We study verification of systems whose transitions consist of accesses to a
Web-based data-source. An access is a lookup on a relation within a relational
database, fixing values for a set of positions in the relation. For example, a
transition can represent access to a Web form, where the user is restricted to
filling in values for a particular set of fields. We look at verifying
properties of a schema describing the possible accesses of such a system. We
present a language where one can describe the properties of an access path, and
also specify additional restrictions on accesses that are enforced by the
schema. Our main property language, AccLTL, is based on a first-order extension
of linear-time temporal logic, interpreting access paths as sequences of
relational structures. We also present a lower-level automaton model,
Aautomata, which AccLTL specifications can compile into. We show that AccLTL
and A-automata can express static analysis problems related to "querying with
limited access patterns" that have been studied in the database literature in
the past, such as whether an access is relevant to answering a query, and
whether two queries are equivalent in the accessible data they can return. We
prove decidability and complexity results for several restrictions and variants
of AccLTL, and explain which properties of paths can be expressed in each
restriction.Comment: VLDB201
Identification of Design Principles
This report identifies those design principles for a (possibly new) query and transformation
language for the Web supporting inference that are considered essential. Based upon these
design principles an initial strawman is selected. Scenarios for querying the Semantic Web
illustrate the design principles and their reflection in the initial strawman, i.e., a first draft of
the query language to be designed and implemented by the REWERSE working group I4
Effective and Efficient Data Access in the Versatile Web Query Language Xcerpt
Access to Web data has become an integral part of many applications
and services. In the past, such data has usually been accessed
through human-tailoredHTMLinterfaces.Nowadays, rich client interfaces
in desktop applications or, increasingly, in browser-based clients ease data
access and allow more complex client processing based on XML or RDF
data retrieved throughWeb service interfaces. Convenient specifications of
the data processing on the client and flexible, expressive service interfaces
for data access become essential in this context.Web query languages such
as XQuery, XSLT, SPARQL, or Xcerpt have been tailored specifically for
such a setting: declarative and efficient access and processing ofWeb data.
Xcerpt stands apart among these languages by its versatility, i.e., its ability
to access not just oneWeb format but many. In this demonstration, two aspects
of Xcerpt are illustrated in detail: The first part of the demonstration
focuses on Xcerpt’s pattern matching constructs and rules to enable effective
and versatile data access. It uses a concrete practical use case from
bibliography management to illustrate these language features. Xcerpt’s
visual companion language visXcerpt is used to provide an intuitive interface
to both data and queries. The second part of the demonstration shows
recent advancements in Xcerpt’s implementation focusing on experimental
evaluation of recent complexity results and optimization techniques, as
well as scalability over a number of usage scenarios and input sizes
State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity
This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on
the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages
to be carried out within the Rewerse project.
From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of
interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of
the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give
an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs;
in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and
in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks
Knowledge Rich Natural Language Queries over Structured Biological Databases
Increasingly, keyword, natural language and NoSQL queries are being used for
information retrieval from traditional as well as non-traditional databases
such as web, document, image, GIS, legal, and health databases. While their
popularity are undeniable for obvious reasons, their engineering is far from
simple. In most part, semantics and intent preserving mapping of a well
understood natural language query expressed over a structured database schema
to a structured query language is still a difficult task, and research to tame
the complexity is intense. In this paper, we propose a multi-level
knowledge-based middleware to facilitate such mappings that separate the
conceptual level from the physical level. We augment these multi-level
abstractions with a concept reasoner and a query strategy engine to dynamically
link arbitrary natural language querying to well defined structured queries. We
demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by presenting a Datalog based
prototype system, called BioSmart, that can compute responses to arbitrary
natural language queries over arbitrary databases once a syntactic
classification of the natural language query is made
Modular Web Queries — From Rules to Stores
Even with all the progress in Semantic technology, accessing Web
data remains a challenging issue with new Web query languages and approaches
appearing regularly. Yet most of these languages, including W3C approaches
such as XQuery and SPARQL, do little to cope with the explosion of the data
size and schemata diversity and richness on the Web. In this paper we propose
a straightforward step toward the improvement of this situation that is simple to
realize and yet effective: Advanced module systems that make partitioning of (a)
the evaluation and (b) the conceptual design of complex Web queries possible.
They provide the query programmer with a powerful, but easy to use high-level
abstraction for packaging, encapsulating, and reusing conceptually related parts
(in our case, rules) of a Web query. The proposed module system combines ease
of use thanks to a simple core concept, the partitioning of rules and their consequences
in flexible “stores”, with ease of deployment thanks to a reduction
semantics. We focus on extending the rule-based Semantic Web query language
Xcerpt with such a module system though the same approach can be applied to
other (rule-based) languages as well
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