Taming existence in RDF querying

Abstract

We introduce the recursive, rule-based RDF query language RDFLog. RDFLog extends previous RDF query languages by arbitrary quantifier alternation: blank nodes may occur in the scope of all, some, or none of the universal variables of a rule. In addition RDFLog is aware of important RDF features such as the distinction between blank nodes, literals and URIs or the RDFS vocabulary. The semantics of RDFLog is closed (every answer is an RDF graph), but lifts RDF's restrictions on literal and blank node occurrences for intermediary data. We show how to define a sound and complete operational semantics that can be implemented using existing logic programming techniques. Using RDFLog we classify previous approaches to RDF querying along their support for blank node construction and show equivalence between languages with full quantifier alternation and languages with only ∈ rules. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.