Interactive Inference of SPARQL Queries Using Provenance

Inference of queries from their output examples has been extensively studied in multiple contexts as means to ease the formulation of queries. In this paper we propose a novel approach for the problem, based on provenance. The idea is to use provenance in two manners: first as an additional information that is associated with the given examples and explains their rationale; and then again as a way to show users a description of the difference between candidate queries, prompting their feedback. We have implemented the framework in the context of simple graph patterns and union thereof, and demonstrate its effectiveness in the context of multiple ontologies.

I. Introduction

SPARQL is the predominant query language for ontology querying, allowing users to fetch, filter, and manipulate data. For a given query, provenance information is a form of metadata that is associated with query results, to describe the origin of each piece of data and the computational process leading to its generation. The tracking, storage and presentation of provenance have been extensively studied in general [1]–[7], and specifically in the context of SPARQL [8], [9].