Handling inconsistencies due to class disjointness in SPARQL updates

Abstract

The problem of updating ontologies has received increased attention in recent years. In the approaches proposed so far, either the update language is restricted to sets of ground atoms or, where the full SPARQL update language is allowed, the TBox language is restricted so that no inconsistencies can arise. In this paper we discuss directions to overcome these limitations. Starting from a DL-Lite fragment covering RDFS and concept disjointness axioms, we define three semantics for SPARQL instance-level (ABox) update: under cautious semantics, inconsistencies are resolved by rejecting updates potentially introducing conflicts; under brave semantics, instead, conflicts are overridden in favor of new information where possible; finally, the fainthearted semantics is a compromise between the former two approaches, designed to accommodate as much of the new information as possible, as long as consistency with the prior knowledge is not violated. We show how these semantics can be implemented in SPARQL via rewritings of polynomial size and draw first conclusions from their practical evaluation.