Abstract
The social web is becoming increasingly popular and important, because it creates the collective intelligence, which can produce more value than the sum of individuals. The social web uses the Semantic Web technology RDF to describe the social data in a machine-readable way. RDF query languages play certainly an important role in the social data analysis for extracting the collective intelligence. However, constructing such queries is not trivial because the social data are often quite large and assembled from a large number of different sources and because of the lack of structure information like ontologies. In order to solve these challenges, we develop a Visual Query System (VQS) for helping the analysts of social data and other semantic data to formulate such queries easily and exactly. In this VQS, we suggest a condensed data view, a browser-like query creation system for absolute beginners and a Visual Query Language (VQL) for beginners and experienced users. Using the browser-like query creation or the VQL, the analysts of social data and other semantic data can construct queries with no or little syntax knowledge; using the condensed view, they can determine easily what queries should be used. Furthermore, our system also supports a number of other functionalities, for example, precise suggestions to extend and refine existing queries. An online demonstration of our VQS is publicly available at http://www.ifis.uni-luebeck.de/index.php?id=luposdate-demo.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Borsje, J., Embregts H.: Graphical query composition and natural language processing in an RDF visualization interface. In: Erasmus School of Economics and Business Economics, vol. Bachelor, Rotterdam (2006)
Catarci, T., Dongilli, P., Di Mascio, T., Franconi, E., Santucci, G., Tessaris, S.: An ontology based visual tool for query formulation support, ECAI 2004, Valencia (2004)
Czejdo, B., Elmasri, R., Rusinkiewicz, M., Embley, D.: An algebraic language for graphical query formulation using an EER model. ACM Conference on Computer Science (1987)
De Troyer, O., Meersman, R., Verlinden, P.: RIDL on the CRIS case: a workbench for NIAM. IFIP.8.1. (1988)
Fadhil A., Haarslev V.: GLOO: a graphical query language for OWL ontologies, OWL: Experience and Directions, pp. 215–260. (2006)
Groppe, J., Groppe, S.: Parallelizing join computations of SPARQL queries for large semantic web databases. In: 26th symposium on applied computing (ACM SAC 2011), TaiChung, Taiwan (2011)
Harth, A., Kruk, S., Decker, S.: Graphical representation of RDF queries, World Wide Web. (2006)
Hofstede, A., Proper, H., van der Weide, T.: Computer supported query formulation in an evolving context. In: Proceedings of the ADC, (1995)
Hogenboom, F., Milea, V., Frasincar, F., Kaymak, U.: RDF-GL: A SPARQL-Based Graphical Query Language for RDF. In: Emergent Web Intelligence: Advanced Information Retrieval. Springer (2010)
Jarrar, M., Dikaiakos, M.D.: MashQL: A query-by-diagram topping SPARQL – towards semantic data mashups. In: ONISW’08, Napa Valley, California, USA (2008)
Jarrar, M., Dikaiakos, M.D.: A data mashup language for the data web, Linked Data on the Web (LDOW) at WWW. Madrid, Spain (2009)
Möller, K., Dragan, L., Ambrus, O., Handschuh, S.: A visual interface for building SPARQL queries in Konduit. In: 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2008), Karlsruhe, Germany (2008)
Möller, K., Handschuh, S., Trüg, S., Josan, L., Decker, S.: Visual programming for the semantic desktop with Konduit. In: Proceedings of the 5th European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2008), Tenerife, Spain (2008)
OpenLink iSPARQL, http://demo.openlinksw.com/isparql (2010)
Parent, C., Spaccapietra, S.: About complex entities, complex objects and object-oriented data models. In: Proceedings of the IFIP 8.1 conference (1989)
Prud’hommeaux, E., Seaborne, A.: SPARQL Query Language for RDF, W3C Recommendation, (2008)
Russell, A., Smart, P.R.: NITELIGHT: A graphical editor for SPARQL Queries. In: 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2008), Karlsruhe, Germany (2008)
Smart, P.R., Russel, A., Braines, D., Kalfoglou, Y., Bao, J., Shadbolt, N.R.: A visual approach to semantic query design using a web-based graphical query designer. In: 16th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering: Practice and Patterns (EKW), Acitrezza, Italy (2008)
SPARQLMotion http://www.topquadrant.com/sparqlmotion (2008)
Suchanek, F.M., Kasneci, G., Weikum, G.: Yago: a core of semantic knowledge. In: WWW (2007)
Tummarello, G., Polleres, A., Morbidoni, C.: Who the FOAF knows Alice? A needed step toward Semantic Web Pipes. In: Proceedings of the ISWC Workshops (2007)
Vdovjak, R., Barna, P., Houben, G.: EROS: explorer for RDFS-based ontologies. In: Proceedings of Intelligent User Interfaces. Miami, FL, USA (2003)
Zloof, M.: Query-by-example: a data base language. IBM Syst J 16(4) (1977)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Groppe, S. (2011). Visual Query Languages. In: Data Management and Query Processing in Semantic Web Databases. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19357-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19357-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19356-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19357-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)