KR and Reasoning on the Semantic Web: Web-Scale Reasoning

Abstract

Reasoning is a key element of the Semantic Web. For the Semantic Web to scale, it is required that reasoning also scales. This chapter focuses on two approaches to achieve this: The first deals with increasing the computational power available for a given task by harnessing distributed resources. These distributed resources refer to peer-to-peer networks, federated data stores, or cluster-based computing. The second deals with containing the set of axioms that need to be considered for a given task. This can be achieved by using intelligent selection strategies and limiting the scope of statements. The former is exemplified by methods substituting expensive web-scale reasoning with the cheaper application of heuristics while the latter by methods to control the quality of the provided axioms. Finally, future issues concerning information centralization and logics vs information retrieval-based methods, metrics, and benchmarking are considered.