Polynomial conjunctive query rewriting under unary inclusion dependencies

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is widely accepted as an important ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, potentially incomplete relational data is enriched by means of ontologies, representing intensional knowledge of the application domain. We consider the problem of conjunctive query answering in OBDA. Certain ontology languages have been identified as FO-rewritable (e.g., DL-Lite and sticky-join sets of TGDs), which means that the ontology can be incorporated into the user's query, thus reducing OBDA to standard relational query evaluation. However, all known query rewriting techniques produce queries that are exponentially large in the size of the user's query, which can be a serious issue for standard relational database engines. In this paper, we present a polynomial query rewriting for conjunctive queries under unary inclusion dependencies. On the other hand, we show that binary inclusion dependencies do not admit polynomial query rewriting algorithms

Circuit Complexity Meets Ontology-Based Data Access

Ontology-based data access is an approach to organizing access to a database augmented with a logical theory. In this approach query answering proceeds through a reformulation of a given query into a new one which can be answered without any use of theory. Thus the problem reduces to the standard database setting. However, the size of the query may increase substantially during the reformulation. In this survey we review a recently developed framework on proving lower and upper bounds on the size of this reformulation by employing methods and results from Boolean circuit complexity.Comment: To appear in proceedings of CSR 2015, LNCS 9139, Springe

Ontology-Based Data Access and Integration

An ontology-based data integration (OBDI) system is an information management system consisting of three components: an ontology, a set of data sources, and the mapping between the two. The ontology is a conceptual, formal description of the domain of interest to a given organization (or a community of users), expressed in terms of relevant concepts, attributes of concepts, relationships between concepts, and logical assertions characterizing the domain knowledge. The data sources are the repositories accessible by the organization where data concerning the domain are stored. In the general case, such repositories are numerous, heterogeneous, each one managed and maintained independently from the others. The mapping is a precise specification of the correspondence between the data contained in the data sources and the elements of the ontology. The main purpose of an OBDI system is to allow information consumers to query the data using the elements in the ontology as predicates. In the special case where the organization manages a single data source, the term ontology-based data access (ODBA) system is used

Ontology-based data access with databases: a short course

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is regarded as a key ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, an ontology defines a high-level global schema of (already existing) data sources and provides a vocabulary for user queries. An OBDA system rewrites such queries and ontologies into the vocabulary of the data sources and then delegates the actual query evaluation to a suitable query answering system such as a relational database management system or a datalog engine. In this chapter, we mainly focus on OBDA with the ontology language OWL 2QL, one of the three profiles of the W3C standard Web Ontology Language OWL 2, and relational databases, although other possible languages will also be discussed. We consider different types of conjunctive query rewriting and their succinctness, different architectures of OBDA systems, and give an overview of the OBDA system Ontop

On the k-Boundedness for Existential Rules

The chase is a fundamental tool for existential rules. Several chase variants are known, which differ on how they handle redundancies possibly caused by the introduction of nulls. Given a chase variant, the halting problem takes as input a set of existential rules and asks if this set of rules ensures the termination of the chase for any factbase. It is well-known that this problem is undecidable for all known chase variants. The related problem of boundedness asks if a given set of existential rules is bounded, i.e., whether there is a predefined upper bound on the number of (breadth-first) steps of the chase, independently from any factbase. This problem is already undecidable in the specific case of datalog rules. However, knowing that a set of rules is bounded for some chase variant does not help much in practice if the bound is unknown. Hence, in this paper, we investigate the decidability of the k-boundedness problem, which asks whether a given set of rules is bounded by an integer k. We prove that k-boundedness is decidable for three chase variants, namely the oblivious, semi-oblivious and restricted chase.Comment: 20 pages, revised version of the paper published at RuleML+RR 201

Development and commissioning of the ALICE pixel detector control system

The Silicon Pixel Detector (SPD) is the innermost detector of the ALICE Inner Tracking System and the closest one to the interaction point. In order to operate the detector in a safe way, a control system was developed in the framework of PVSS which allows to monitor and control a large number of parameters such as temperatures, currents, voltages, etc. The control system of the SPD implements interlock features to protect the detector against overheating and prevents operating it in case of malfunctions. The nearly 50,000 parameters required to fully configure the detector are stored in a database which employs automatic configuration versions after a new calibration run has been carried out. Several user interface panels were developed to allow experts and non-expert shifters to operate the detector in an easy and safe way. This contribution provides an overview of the SPD control system

Towards Efficient Reasoning under Guarded-based Disjunctive Existential Rules

International audienceThe complete picture of the complexity of answering (unions of) conjunctive queries under the main guarded-based classes of disjunc- tive existential rules has been recently settled. It has been shown that the problem is very hard, namely 2ExpTime-complete, even for fixed sets of rules expressed in lightweight formalisms. This gives rise to the question whether its complexity can be reduced by restricting the query language. Several subclasses of conjunctive queries have been proposed with the aim of reducing the complexity of classical database problems such as query evaluation and query containment. Three of the most prominent subclasses of this kind are queries of bounded hypertree-width, queries of bounded treewidth and acyclic queries. The central objective of the present paper is to understand whether the above query languages have a positive impact on the complexity of query answering under the main guarded-based classes of disjunctive existential rules. We show that (unions of) conjunctive queries of bounded hypertree- width and of bounded treewidth do not reduce the complexity of our problem, even if we focus on predicates of bounded arity, or on fixed sets of disjunctive existential rules. Regarding acyclic queries, although our problem remains 2ExpTime-complete in general, in some relevant set- tings the complexity reduces to ExpTime-complete; in fact, this requires to bound the arity of the predicates, and for some expressive guarded- based formalisms, to fix the set of rules