Formal foundations for RDF/S KB evolution

• Published in: Knowledge and information systems Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 153 - 191
• Main Authors: Flouris, Giorgos, Konstantinidis, George, Antoniou, Grigoris, Christophides, Vassilis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer-Verlag 01.04.2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Computer Science; Computer science; control theory; systems; Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery; Database Management; Evolution; Exact sciences and technology; Formalism; Information Storage and Retrieval; Information Systems and Communication Service; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Information systems. Data bases; Integrity; IT in Business; Knowledge; Learning and adaptive systems; Memory organisation. Data processing; Ontology; Operators; Principles; Regular Paper; Relational data bases; Semantic web; Semantics; Software; Studies; Success; Tuning; Validity; Change operator; Curated KBs; RDF/S evolution; Evolution in the presence of integrity constraints; Integrity constraints; Principle of Minimal Change; Belief; Customization; Knowledge base; Resource description framework; Maintenance; Addressing; Semantic web; Treatment; Efficiency; Semantics; Constraint integrity
• ISSN: 0219-1377; 0219-3116
• DOI: 10.1007/s10115-012-0500-2

There are ongoing efforts to provide declarative formalisms of integrity constraints over RDF/S data. In this context, addressing the evolution of RDF/S knowledge bases while respecting associated constraints is a challenging issue, yet to receive a formal treatment. We provide a theoretical framework for dealing with both schema and data change requests. We define the notion of a rational change operator as one that satisfies the belief revision principles of Success, Validity and Minimal Change. The semantics of such an operator are subject to customization, by tuning the properties that a rational change should adhere to. We prove some interesting theoretical results and propose a general-purpose algorithm for implementing rational change operators in knowledge bases with integrity constraints, which allows us to handle uniformly any possible change request in a provably rational and consistent manner. Then, we apply our framework to a well-studied RDF/S variant, for which we suggest a specific notion of minimality. For efficiency purposes, we also describe specialized versions of the general evolution algorithm for the RDF/S case, which provably have the same semantics as the general-purpose one for a limited set of (useful in practice) types of change requests.