City Research Online

Abstract

An important application of semantic technologies in industry has been the formalisation of information models using OWL 2 ontologies and the use of RDF for storing and exchanging application data. Moreover, legacy data can be virtualised as RDF using ontologies following the ontology-based data access (OBDA) approach. In all these applications, it is important to provide domain experts with query formulation tools for expressing their information needs in terms of queries over ontologies. In
this work, we present such a tool, OptiqueVQS, which is designed based on our experience with OBDA applications in Statoil and Siemens and on best HCI practices for interdisciplinary engineering environments. OptiqueVQS implements a number of unique
techniques distinguishing it from analogous query formulation systems. In particular, it exploits ontology projection techniques to enable graph-based navigation over an ontology during query construction. Secondly, while OptiqueVQS is primarily ontology driven, it exploits sampled data to enhance selection of data values for some data attributes. Finally, OptiqueVQS is built on
well-grounded requirements, design rationale, and quality attributes. We evaluated OptiqueVQS with both domain experts and casual users and qualitatively compared our system against prominent visual systems for ontology-driven query formulation and
exploration of semantic data. OptiqueVQS is available online and can be downloaded together with an example OBDA scenario.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The final publication is available at IOS Press through http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/sw-180293
Publisher Keywords:	Visual query formulation, OWL 2 ontologies, RDF data, SPARQL queries, data retrieval, usability
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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