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Integrating Relational Databases with the Semantic Web: A Reflection

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10370))

Abstract

From the beginning it was understood that the success of the Semantic Web hinges on integrating the vast amount of data stored in Relational Databases. This manuscript reflects on the last 10 years of our research results to integrate Relational Databases with the Semantic Web. Since 2007, our research has led us to answer the following question: How and to what extent can Relational Databases be Integrated with the Semantic Web? The answer comes in two parts. We start by presenting how to get from Relational Databases to the Semantic Web via mappings, such as the W3C Direct Mapping and R2RML standards. Subsequently, we present how the Semantic Web can access Relational Databases. We finalize with how Relational Databases and Semantic Web technologies are being used practice for data integration and discuss open challenges.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.w3.org/2007/03/RdfRDB/.

  2. 2.

    The term “entity” can be considered synonymous to resource.

  3. 3.

    The prefix “rdf:” represents http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#, hence the full IRI for rdf:type is http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type. Additionally, the prefix “foaf:” represents http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/, hence the full IRI for foaf:Person is http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person.

  4. 4.

    Recall that \(\mathbf{V}\) is an infinite set of variables disjoint from \(\mathbf{I}\), \(\mathbf{B}\) and \(\mathbf{L}\) and that every element in \(\mathbf{V}\) starts with the symbol “?”. See Sect. 2.3.

  5. 5.

    For example, a space is replaced with %20 e.g., the percent encoding of “Hello World” is “Hello%20World”.

  6. 6.

    We refer the reader to [2] for the syntax and semantics of Datalog.

  7. 7.

    In practice an RDBMS will not allow a violation of an integrity constraint. However, it may be the case that an RDBMS is not being used and a user may have a dump of data (e.g. in CSV format) and may indicate that a particular column is the primary key when in reality the column violates the constraint.

  8. 8.

    http://www.w3.org/ns/r2rml.

  9. 9.

    Given that \(\alpha (s,\bar{x})\) is domain-independent, there exists a finite number of tuples \((c_1,\bar{d})\) such that \(I \,\models \, \alpha (c_1,\bar{d})\).

  10. 10.

    https://github.com/d2rq/d2rq/issues/94 As of April 2017, this issue is still open.

  11. 11.

    If \(t = (\mathtt{A}, \mathtt{type}, \mathtt{symProp})\), then we only need to replace \(\mathtt{A}\) by a.

  12. 12.

    In the evaluation, we also consider the case when indices are present.

  13. 13.

    http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28313/qrbasic.htm.

  14. 14.

    http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/.

  15. 15.

    http://www.edmcouncil.org/financialbusiness.

  16. 16.

    https://semanticarts.com/gist/.

  17. 17.

    http://schema.org/.

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Sequeda, J.F. (2017). Integrating Relational Databases with the Semantic Web: A Reflection. In: Ianni, G., et al. Reasoning Web. Semantic Interoperability on the Web. Reasoning Web 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10370. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61033-7_4

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