Compact semantic representations of observational data

Das Konzept des Internet der Dinge (IoT) ist in mehreren Bereichen weit verbreitet, damit Geräte miteinander interagieren und bestimmte Aufgaben erfüllen können. IoT-Geräte umfassen verschiedene Konzepte, z.B. Sensoren, Programme, Computer und Aktoren. IoT-Geräte beobachten ihre Umgebung, um Informationen zu sammeln und miteinander zu kommunizieren, um gemeinsame Aufgaben zu erfüllen. Diese Vorrichtungen erzeugen kontinuierlich Beobachtungsdatenströme, die zu historischen Daten werden, wenn diese Beobachtungen gespeichert werden. Durch die Zunahme der Anzahl der IoT-Geräte wird eine große Menge an Streaming- und historischen Beobachtungsdaten erzeugt. Darüber hinaus wurden mehrere Ontologien, wie die Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) Ontologie, für die semantische Annotation von Beobachtungsdaten vorgeschlagen - entweder Stream oder historisch. Das Resource Description Framework (RDF) ist ein weit verbreitetes Datenmodell zur semantischen Beschreibung der Datensätze. Semantische Annotation bietet ein gemeinsames Verständnis für die Verarbeitung und Analyse von Beobachtungsdaten. Durch das Hinzufügen von Semantik wird die Datengröße jedoch weiter erhöht, insbesondere wenn die Beobachtungswerte von mehreren Geräten redundant erfasst werden. So können beispielsweise mehrere Sensoren Beobachtungen erzeugen, die den gleichen Wert für die relative Luftfeuchtigkeit in einem bestimmten Zeitstempel und einer bestimmten Stadt anzeigen. Diese Situation kann in einem RDF-Diagramm mit vier RDF-Tripel dargestellt werden, wobei Beobachtungen als Tripel dargestellt werden, die das beobachtete Phänomen, die Maßeinheit, den Zeitstempel und die Koordinaten beschreiben. Die RDF-Tripel einer Beobachtung sind mit dem gleichen Thema verbunden. Solche Beobachtungen teilen sich die gleichen Objekte in einer bestimmten Gruppe von Eigenschaften, d.h. sie entsprechen einem Sternmuster, das sich aus diesen Eigenschaften und Objekten zusammensetzt. Wenn die Anzahl dieser Subjektentitäten oder Eigenschaften in diesen Sternmustern groß ist, wird die Größe des RDF-Diagramms und der Abfrageverarbeitung negativ beeinflusst; wir bezeichnen diese Sternmuster als häufige Sternmuster. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit dem Problem der Identifizierung von häufigen Sternenmustern in RDF-Diagrammen und entwickelt Berechnungsmethoden, um häufige Sternmuster zu identifizieren und ein faktorisiertes RDF-Diagramm zu erzeugen, bei dem die Anzahl der häufigen Sternmuster minimiert wird. Darüber hinaus wenden wir diese faktorisierten RDF-Darstellungen über historische semantische Sensordaten an, die mit der SSN-Ontologie beschrieben werden, und präsentieren tabellarische Darstellungen von faktorisierten semantischen Sensordaten, um Big Data-Frameworks auszunutzen. Darüber hinaus entwickelt diese Arbeit einen wissensbasierten Ansatz namens DESERT, der in der Lage ist, bei Bedarf Streamdaten zu faktorisieren und semantisch anzureichern (on-Demand factorizE and Semantically Enrich stReam daTa). Wir bewerten die Leistung unserer vorgeschlagenen Techniken anhand mehrerer RDF-Diagramm-Benchmarks. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass unsere Techniken in der Lage sind, häufige Sternmuster effektiv und effizient zu erkennen, und die Größe der RDF-Diagramme kann um bis zu 66,56% reduziert werden, während die im ursprünglichen RDF-Diagramm dargestellten Daten erhalten bleiben. Darüber hinaus sind die kompakten Darstellungen in der Lage, die Anzahl der RDF-Tripel um mindestens 53,25% in historischen Beobachtungsdaten und bis zu 94,34% in Beobachtungsdatenströmen zu reduzieren. Darüber hinaus reduzieren die Ergebnisse der Anfrageauswertung über historische Daten die Ausführungszeit der Anfrage um bis zu drei Größenordnungen. In Beobachtungsdatenströmen wird die Größe der zur Beantwortung der Anfrage benötigten Daten um 92,53% reduziert, wodurch der Speicherplatzbedarf zur Beantwortung der Anfragen reduziert wird. Diese Ergebnisse belegen, dass IoT-Daten mit den vorgeschlagenen kompakten Darstellungen effizient dargestellt werden können, wodurch die negativen Auswirkungen semantischer Annotationen auf das IoT-Datenmanagement reduziert werden.The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has been widely adopted in several domains to enable devices to interact with each other and perform certain tasks. IoT devices encompass different concepts, e.g., sensors, programs, computers, and actuators. IoT devices observe their surroundings to collect information and communicate with each other in order to perform mutual tasks. These devices continuously generate observational data streams, which become historical data when these observations are stored. Due to an increase in the number of IoT devices, a large amount of streaming and historical observational data is being produced. Moreover, several ontologies, like the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) Ontology, have been proposed for semantic annotation of observational data-either streams or historical. Resource Description Framework (RDF) is widely adopted data model to semantically describe the datasets. Semantic annotation provides a shared understanding for processing and analysis of observational data. However, adding semantics, further increases the data size especially when the observation values are redundantly sensed by several devices. For example, several sensors can generate observations indicating the same value for relative humidity in a given timestamp and city. This situation can be represented in an RDF graph using four RDF triples where observations are represented as triples that describe the observed phenomenon, the unit of measurement, the timestamp, and the coordinates. The RDF triples of an observation are associated with the same subject. Such observations share the same objects in a certain group of properties, i.e., they match star patterns composed of these properties and objects. In case the number of these subject entities or properties in these star patterns is large, the size of the RDF graph and query processing are negatively impacted; we refer these star patterns as frequent star patterns. This thesis addresses the problem of identifying frequent star patterns in RDF graphs and develop computational methods to identify frequent star patterns and generate a factorized RDF graph where the number of frequent star patterns is minimized. Furthermore, we apply these factorized RDF representations over historical semantic sensor data described using the SSN ontology and present tabular-based representations of factorized semantic sensor data in order to exploit Big Data frameworks. In addition, this thesis devises a knowledge-driven approach named DESERT that is able to on-Demand factorizE and Semantically Enrich stReam daTa. We evaluate the performance of our proposed techniques on several RDF graph benchmarks. The outcomes show that our techniques are able to effectively and efficiently detect frequent star patterns and RDF graph size can be reduced by up to 66.56% while data represented in the original RDF graph is preserved. Moreover, the compact representations are able to reduce the number of RDF triples by at least 53.25% in historical observational data and upto 94.34% in observational data streams. Additionally, query evaluation results over historical data reduce query execution time by up to three orders of magnitude. In observational data streams the size of the data required to answer the query is reduced by 92.53% reducing the memory space requirements to answer the queries. These results provide evidence that IoT data can be efficiently represented using the proposed compact representations, reducing thus, the negative impact that semantic annotations may have on IoT data management

Metadata-driven data integration

Cotutela: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya i Université Libre de Bruxelles, IT4BI-DC programme for the joint Ph.D. degree in computer science.Data has an undoubtable impact on society. Storing and processing large amounts of available data is currently one of the key success factors for an organization. Nonetheless, we are recently witnessing a change represented by huge and heterogeneous amounts of data. Indeed, 90% of the data in the world has been generated in the last two years. Thus, in order to carry on these data exploitation tasks, organizations must first perform data integration combining data from multiple sources to yield a unified view over them. Yet, the integration of massive and heterogeneous amounts of data requires revisiting the traditional integration assumptions to cope with the new requirements posed by such data-intensive settings. This PhD thesis aims to provide a novel framework for data integration in the context of data-intensive ecosystems, which entails dealing with vast amounts of heterogeneous data, from multiple sources and in their original format. To this end, we advocate for an integration process consisting of sequential activities governed by a semantic layer, implemented via a shared repository of metadata. From an stewardship perspective, this activities are the deployment of a data integration architecture, followed by the population of such shared metadata. From a data consumption perspective, the activities are virtual and materialized data integration, the former an exploratory task and the latter a consolidation one. Following the proposed framework, we focus on providing contributions to each of the four activities. We begin proposing a software reference architecture for semantic-aware data-intensive systems. Such architecture serves as a blueprint to deploy a stack of systems, its core being the metadata repository. Next, we propose a graph-based metadata model as formalism for metadata management. We focus on supporting schema and data source evolution, a predominant factor on the heterogeneous sources at hand. For virtual integration, we propose query rewriting algorithms that rely on the previously proposed metadata model. We additionally consider semantic heterogeneities in the data sources, which the proposed algorithms are capable of automatically resolving. Finally, the thesis focuses on the materialized integration activity, and to this end, proposes a method to select intermediate results to materialize in data-intensive flows. Overall, the results of this thesis serve as contribution to the field of data integration in contemporary data-intensive ecosystems.Les dades tenen un impacte indubtable en la societat. La capacitat d’emmagatzemar i processar grans quantitats de dades disponibles és avui en dia un dels factors claus per l’èxit d’una organització. No obstant, avui en dia estem presenciant un canvi representat per grans volums de dades heterogenis. En efecte, el 90% de les dades mundials han sigut generades en els últims dos anys. Per tal de dur a terme aquestes tasques d’explotació de dades, les organitzacions primer han de realitzar una integració de les dades, combinantles a partir de diferents fonts amb l’objectiu de tenir-ne una vista unificada d’elles. Per això, aquest fet requereix reconsiderar les assumpcions tradicionals en integració amb l’objectiu de lidiar amb els requisits imposats per aquests sistemes de tractament massiu de dades. Aquesta tesi doctoral té com a objectiu proporcional un nou marc de treball per a la integració de dades en el context de sistemes de tractament massiu de dades, el qual implica lidiar amb una gran quantitat de dades heterogènies, provinents de múltiples fonts i en el seu format original. Per això, proposem un procés d’integració compost d’una seqüència d’activitats governades per una capa semàntica, la qual és implementada a partir d’un repositori de metadades compartides. Des d’una perspectiva d’administració, aquestes activitats són el desplegament d’una arquitectura d’integració de dades, seguit per la inserció d’aquestes metadades compartides. Des d’una perspectiva de consum de dades, les activitats són la integració virtual i materialització de les dades, la primera sent una tasca exploratòria i la segona una de consolidació. Seguint el marc de treball proposat, ens centrem en proporcionar contribucions a cada una de les quatre activitats. La tesi inicia proposant una arquitectura de referència de software per a sistemes de tractament massiu de dades amb coneixement semàntic. Aquesta arquitectura serveix com a planell per a desplegar un conjunt de sistemes, sent el repositori de metadades al seu nucli. Posteriorment, proposem un model basat en grafs per a la gestió de metadades. Concretament, ens centrem en donar suport a l’evolució d’esquemes i fonts de dades, un dels factors predominants en les fonts de dades heterogènies considerades. Per a l’integració virtual, proposem algorismes de rescriptura de consultes que usen el model de metadades previament proposat. Com a afegitó, considerem heterogeneïtat semàntica en les fonts de dades, les quals els algorismes de rescriptura poden resoldre automàticament. Finalment, la tesi es centra en l’activitat d’integració materialitzada. Per això proposa un mètode per a seleccionar els resultats intermedis a materialitzar un fluxes de tractament intensiu de dades. En general, els resultats d’aquesta tesi serveixen com a contribució al camp d’integració de dades en els ecosistemes de tractament massiu de dades contemporanisLes données ont un impact indéniable sur la société. Le stockage et le traitement de grandes quantités de données disponibles constituent actuellement l’un des facteurs clés de succès d’une entreprise. Néanmoins, nous assistons récemment à un changement représenté par des quantités de données massives et hétérogènes. En effet, 90% des données dans le monde ont été générées au cours des deux dernières années. Ainsi, pour mener à bien ces tâches d’exploitation des données, les organisations doivent d’abord réaliser une intégration des données en combinant des données provenant de sources multiples pour obtenir une vue unifiée de ces dernières. Cependant, l’intégration de quantités de données massives et hétérogènes nécessite de revoir les hypothèses d’intégration traditionnelles afin de faire face aux nouvelles exigences posées par les systèmes de gestion de données massives. Cette thèse de doctorat a pour objectif de fournir un nouveau cadre pour l’intégration de données dans le contexte d’écosystèmes à forte intensité de données, ce qui implique de traiter de grandes quantités de données hétérogènes, provenant de sources multiples et dans leur format d’origine. À cette fin, nous préconisons un processus d’intégration constitué d’activités séquentielles régies par une couche sémantique, mise en oeuvre via un dépôt partagé de métadonnées. Du point de vue de la gestion, ces activités consistent à déployer une architecture d’intégration de données, suivies de la population de métadonnées partagées. Du point de vue de la consommation de données, les activités sont l’intégration de données virtuelle et matérialisée, la première étant une tâche exploratoire et la seconde, une tâche de consolidation. Conformément au cadre proposé, nous nous attachons à fournir des contributions à chacune des quatre activités. Nous commençons par proposer une architecture logicielle de référence pour les systèmes de gestion de données massives et à connaissance sémantique. Une telle architecture consiste en un schéma directeur pour le déploiement d’une pile de systèmes, le dépôt de métadonnées étant son composant principal. Ensuite, nous proposons un modèle de métadonnées basé sur des graphes comme formalisme pour la gestion des métadonnées. Nous mettons l’accent sur la prise en charge de l’évolution des schémas et des sources de données, facteur prédominant des sources hétérogènes sous-jacentes. Pour l’intégration virtuelle, nous proposons des algorithmes de réécriture de requêtes qui s’appuient sur le modèle de métadonnées proposé précédemment. Nous considérons en outre les hétérogénéités sémantiques dans les sources de données, que les algorithmes proposés sont capables de résoudre automatiquement. Enfin, la thèse se concentre sur l’activité d’intégration matérialisée et propose à cette fin une méthode de sélection de résultats intermédiaires à matérialiser dans des flux des données massives. Dans l’ensemble, les résultats de cette thèse constituent une contribution au domaine de l’intégration des données dans les écosystèmes contemporains de gestion de données massivesPostprint (published version

Graph Summarization

The continuous and rapid growth of highly interconnected datasets, which are both voluminous and complex, calls for the development of adequate processing and analytical techniques. One method for condensing and simplifying such datasets is graph summarization. It denotes a series of application-specific algorithms designed to transform graphs into more compact representations while preserving structural patterns, query answers, or specific property distributions. As this problem is common to several areas studying graph topologies, different approaches, such as clustering, compression, sampling, or influence detection, have been proposed, primarily based on statistical and optimization methods. The focus of our chapter is to pinpoint the main graph summarization methods, but especially to focus on the most recent approaches and novel research trends on this topic, not yet covered by previous surveys.Comment: To appear in the Encyclopedia of Big Data Technologie

On the Evaluation of RDF Distribution Algorithms Implemented over Apache Spark

Querying very large RDF data sets in an efficient manner requires a sophisticated distribution strategy. Several innovative solutions have recently been proposed for optimizing data distribution with predefined query workloads. This paper presents an in-depth analysis and experimental comparison of five representative and complementary distribution approaches. For achieving fair experimental results, we are using Apache Spark as a common parallel computing framework by rewriting the concerned algorithms using the Spark API. Spark provides guarantees in terms of fault tolerance, high availability and scalability which are essential in such systems. Our different implementations aim to highlight the fundamental implementation-independent characteristics of each approach in terms of data preparation, load balancing, data replication and to some extent to query answering cost and performance. The presented measures are obtained by testing each system on one synthetic and one real-world data set over query workloads with differing characteristics and different partitioning constraints.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Schema-aware keyword search on linked data

Keyword search is a popular technique for querying the ever growing repositories of RDF graph data on the Web. This is due to the fact that the users do not need to master complex query languages (e.g., SQL, SPARQL) and they do not need to know the underlying structure of the data on the Web to compose their queries. Keyword search is simple and flexible. However, it is at the same time ambiguous since a keyword query can be interpreted in different ways. This feature of keyword search poses at least two challenges: (a) identifying relevant results among a multitude of candidate results, and (b) dealing with the performance scalability issue of the query evaluation algorithms. In the literature, multiple schema-unaware approaches are proposed to cope with the above challenges. Some of them identify as relevant results only those candidate results which maintain the keyword instances in close proximity. Other approaches filter out irrelevant results using their structural characteristics or rank and top-k process the retrieved results based on statistical information about the data. In any case, these approaches cannot disambiguate the query to identify the intent of the user and they cannot scale satisfactorily when the size of the data and the number of the query keywords grow. In recent years, different approaches tried to exploit the schema (structural summary) of the RDF (Resource Description Framework) data graph to address the problems above. In this context, an original hierarchical clustering technique is introduced in this dissertation. This approach clusters the results based on a semantic interpretation of the keyword instances and takes advantage of relevance feedback from the user. The clustering hierarchy uses pattern graphs which are structured queries and clustering together result graphs with the same structure. Pattern graphs represent possible interpretations for the keyword query. By navigating though the hierarchy the user can select the pattern graph which is relevant to her intent. Nevertheless, structural summaries are approximate representations of the data and, therefore, might return empty answers or miss results which are relevant to the user intent. To address this issue, a novel approach is presented which combines the use of the structural summary and the user feedback with a relaxation technique for pattern graphs to extract additional results potentially of interest to the user. Query caching and multi-query optimization techniques are leveraged for the efficient evaluation of relaxed pattern graphs. Although the approaches which consider the structural summary of the data graph are promising, they require interaction with the user. It is claimed in this dissertation that without additional information from the user, it is not possible to produce results of high quality from keyword search on RDF data with the existing techniques. In this regard, an original keyword query language on RDF data is introduced which allows the user to convey his intention flexibly and effortlessly by specifying cohesive keyword groups. A cohesive group of keywords in a query indicates that its keywords should form a cohesive unit in the query results. It is experimentally demonstrated that cohesive keyword queries improve the result quality effectively and prune the search space of the pattern graphs efficiently compared to traditional keyword queries. Most importantly, these benefits are achieved while retaining the simplicity and the convenience of traditional keyword search. The last issue addressed in this dissertation is the diversification problem for keyword search on RDF data. The goal of diversification is to trade off relevance and diversity in the results set of a keyword query in order to minimize the dissatisfaction of the average user. Novel metrics are developed for assessing relevance and diversity along with techniques for the generation of a relevant and diversified set of query interpretations for a keyword query on an RDF data graph. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the metrics and the efficiency of the approach

Kaskade: Graph Views for Efficient Graph Analytics

Graphs are an increasingly popular way to model real-world entities and relationships between them, ranging from social networks to data lineage graphs and biological datasets. Queries over these large graphs often involve expensive subgraph traversals and complex analytical computations. These real-world graphs are often substantially more structured than a generic vertex-and-edge model would suggest, but this insight has remained mostly unexplored by existing graph engines for graph query optimization purposes. Therefore, in this work, we focus on leveraging structural properties of graphs and queries to automatically derive materialized graph views that can dramatically speed up query evaluation. We present KASKADE, the first graph query optimization framework to exploit materialized graph views for query optimization purposes. KASKADE employs a novel constraint-based view enumeration technique that mines constraints from query workloads and graph schemas, and injects them during view enumeration to significantly reduce the search space of views to be considered. Moreover, it introduces a graph view size estimator to pick the most beneficial views to materialize given a query set and to select the best query evaluation plan given a set of materialized views. We evaluate its performance over real-world graphs, including the provenance graph that we maintain at Microsoft to enable auditing, service analytics, and advanced system optimizations. Our results show that KASKADE substantially reduces the effective graph size and yields significant performance speedups (up to 50X), in some cases making otherwise intractable queries possible