1,025 research outputs found
A Visual Language for Web Querying and Reasoning
As XML is increasingly being used to represent information on the Web, query and reasoning languages for such data are needed. This article argues that in contrast to the navigational approach taken in particular by XPath and XQuery, a positional approach as used in the language Xcerpt is better suited for a straightforward visual representation. The constructs of the pattern- and rule-based query language Xcerpt are introduced and it is shown how the visual representation visXcerpt renders these constructs to form a visual query language for XML
Completing Queries: Rewriting of IncompleteWeb Queries under Schema Constraints
Reactive Web systems, Web services, and Web-based publish/
subscribe systems communicate events as XML messages, and in
many cases require composite event detection: it is not sufficient to react
to single event messages, but events have to be considered in relation to
other events that are received over time.
Emphasizing language design and formal semantics, we describe the
rule-based query language XChangeEQ for detecting composite events.
XChangeEQ is designed to completely cover and integrate the four complementary
querying dimensions: event data, event composition, temporal
relationships, and event accumulation. Semantics are provided as
model and fixpoint theories; while this is an established approach for rule
languages, it has not been applied for event queries before
Reasoning & Querying – State of the Art
Various query languages for Web and Semantic Web data, both for practical use and as an area of research in the scientific community, have emerged in recent years. At the same time, the broad adoption of the internet where keyword search is used in many applications, e.g. search engines, has familiarized casual users with using keyword queries to retrieve information on the internet. Unlike this easy-to-use querying, traditional query languages require knowledge of the language itself as well as of the data to be queried. Keyword-based query languages for XML and RDF bridge the gap between the two, aiming at enabling simple querying of semi-structured data, which is relevant e.g. in the context of the emerging Semantic Web. This article presents an overview of the field of keyword querying for XML and RDF
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”
A survey on tree matching and XML retrieval
International audienceWith the increasing number of available XML documents, numerous approaches for retrieval have been proposed in the literature. They usually use the tree representation of documents and queries to process them, whether in an implicit or explicit way. Although retrieving XML documents can be considered as a tree matching problem between the query tree and the document trees, only a few approaches take advantage of the algorithms and methods proposed by the graph theory. In this paper, we aim at studying the theoretical approaches proposed in the literature for tree matching and at seeing how these approaches have been adapted to XML querying and retrieval, from both an exact and an approximate matching perspective. This study will allow us to highlight theoretical aspects of graph theory that have not been yet explored in XML retrieval
An Entailment Relation for Reasoning on the Web
Reasoning on the Web is receiving an increasing attention because of emerging fields such as Web adaption and Semantic Web. Indeed, the advanced functionalities striven for in these fields call for reasoning capabilities. Reasoning on the Web, however, is usually done using existing techniques rarely fitting the Web. As a consequence, additional data processing like data conversion from Web formats (e.g. XML or HTML) into some other formats (e.g. classical logic terms and formulas) is often needed and aspects of the Web (e.g. its inherent inconsistency) are neglected. This article first gives requirements for an entailment tuned to reasoning on the Web. Then, it describes how classical logic’s entailment can be modified so as to enforce these requirements. Finally, it discusses how the proposed entailment can be used in applying logic programming to reasoning on the Web
Reactivity on the Web
Reactivity, the ability to detect simple and composite events and respond in a timely
manner, is an essential requirement in many present-day information systems. With
the emergence of new, dynamic Web applications, reactivity on the Web is receiving
increasing attention. Reactive Web-based systems need to detect and react not only
to simple events but also to complex, real-life situations. This paper introduces
XChange, a language for programming reactive behaviour on the Web, emphasising
the querying of event data and detection of composite events
Logics for Unranked Trees: An Overview
Labeled unranked trees are used as a model of XML documents, and logical
languages for them have been studied actively over the past several years. Such
logics have different purposes: some are better suited for extracting data,
some for expressing navigational properties, and some make it easy to relate
complex properties of trees to the existence of tree automata for those
properties. Furthermore, logics differ significantly in their model-checking
properties, their automata models, and their behavior on ordered and unordered
trees. In this paper we present a survey of logics for unranked trees
Web and Semantic Web Query Languages
A number of techniques have been developed to facilitate
powerful data retrieval on the Web and Semantic Web. Three categories
of Web query languages can be distinguished, according to the format
of the data they can retrieve: XML, RDF and Topic Maps. This article
introduces the spectrum of languages falling into these categories
and summarises their salient aspects. The languages are introduced using
common sample data and query types. Key aspects of the query
languages considered are stressed in a conclusion
Deterministic Automata for Unordered Trees
Automata for unordered unranked trees are relevant for defining schemas and
queries for data trees in Json or Xml format. While the existing notions are
well-investigated concerning expressiveness, they all lack a proper notion of
determinism, which makes it difficult to distinguish subclasses of automata for
which problems such as inclusion, equivalence, and minimization can be solved
efficiently. In this paper, we propose and investigate different notions of
"horizontal determinism", starting from automata for unranked trees in which
the horizontal evaluation is performed by finite state automata. We show that a
restriction to confluent horizontal evaluation leads to polynomial-time
emptiness and universality, but still suffers from coNP-completeness of the
emptiness of binary intersections. Finally, efficient algorithms can be
obtained by imposing an order of horizontal evaluation globally for all
automata in the class. Depending on the choice of the order, we obtain
different classes of automata, each of which has the same expressiveness as
CMso.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2014, arXiv:1408.556
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