SRelation: Fast RDF Graph Traversal

Abstract

Linked Data in the RDF format can be viewed as a set of interlinked data on the web. Particular tasks, which are computed upon this data includes text based searching for entities, relations or performing various queries using querying languages like SPARQL. Such interlinked data can be interpreted as a graph with edges and vertexes. For the current SPARQL 1.1 standard, there is support for graph traversal, proposed and announced by SPARQL working group. Regarding performance, the property path task is the problem in current solutions. This paper describes an innovative and time efficient method of the graph traversal task - SRelation. First we discuss current approaches for SPARQL 1.1 graph traversal. For data access we mention local and distributed solutions, disk-based, mixed and whole-in-memory data storage aspects. We debate pros and cons of various approaches and suggest our new method SRelation to fit in the field of in-memory concept. To support this, we present our experiments on selected Linked Data datasets. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.