Ontology-driven relational query formulation using the semantic and assertion capabilities of OWL-DL

Abstract

This work investigates the extent to which domain knowledge, expressed in a domain ontology, can assist end-users in formulating relational queries that can be executed over a complex relational database. In this regard, an ontology-driven query formulation architectural framework has been devised, namely OntoQF, that implements a two-phased approach – the pre-processing and translation phases. In the pre-processing phase, a new database-to-ontology transformation approach has been synthesised where domain ontology is populated and enriched with problem domain concepts and semantic relationships specified using OWL-DL. Once domain ontology has been formulated, end-users can write sophisticated ontology-based queries that are then translated, in the translation phase, into the corresponding rela- tional query statements. In order to validate the correctness of translating single or multiple OWL-DL constructs into their corresponding relational ones, a set of test cases have been derived from the medical domain. Our results demonstrated that the OntoQF framework enriches domain ontology and its associ- ated algorithms drive the process of relational query formulation without the need to both replicate transactional data into the associated domain ontology and have knowledge of the underlying database schema.

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