OWL-QL-a language for deductive query answering on the Semantic Web

  • Authors:

  • Richard Fikes;Patrick Hayes;Ian Horrocks

  • Affiliations:

  • Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Institute for Human and Computer Cognition, University of West Florida Pensacola, FL, USA;Information Management Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester M139PL, UK

  • Venue:
  • Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

This paper discusses the issues involved in designing a query language for the Semantic Web and presents the OWL query language (OWL-QL) as a candidate standard language and protocol for query-answering dialogues among Semantic Web computational agents using knowledge represented in the W3Cs ontology web language (OWL). OWL-QL is a formal language and precisely specifies the semantic relationships among a query, a query answer, and the knowledge base(s) used to produce the answer. Unlike standard database and Web query languages, OWL-QL supports query-answering dialogues in which the answering agent may use automated reasoning methods to derive answers to queries, as well as dialogues in which the knowledge to be used in answering a query may be in multiple knowledge bases on the Semantic Web, and/or where those knowledge bases are not specified by the querying agent. In this setting, the set of answers to a query may be of unpredictable size and may require an unpredictable amount of time to compute.