Querying Ontology Based Database Using OntoQL (an Ontology Query Language)

Stéphane Jean (1) , Yamine Aït-Ameur (1) , Guy Pierra (1)

1 LISI [Poitiers] - Laboratoire d'informatique scientifique et industrielle [EA 1232]

Nowadays, ontologies are used in several research domains by offering the means to describe and represent concepts of information sources. Therefore, several approaches and systems storing ontologies and their instances in the same repository (database) have been proposed. As a consequence, defining a query language to support ontology-based database (OBDB) becomes a challenge for the database community. In this paper, we present OntoQL, an ontology query language for OBDBs. Firstly, we present formally the OBDB data model supported by this language. Secondly, an overview of the algebra defining the semantics of operators used in OntoQL is described. Several query examples showing the interest of this language compared to traditional database query languages are given along this paper. Finally, we present a prototype of the implementation of OntoQL.

Mots clés: Ontology; Database; Query language; Query Algebra; Ontology-Based Database

Domaines: Base de données [cs.DB]

Stéphane Jean, Yamine Aït-Ameur, Guy Pierra. Querying Ontology Based Database Using OntoQL (an Ontology Query Language). ODBASE 2006, Oct 2006, Montpellier, France. pp.704-721, ⟨10.1007/11914853_43⟩. ⟨hal-00229194⟩