Re: SPARQL and the owl web language

Dear Claudio,

No, sensible questions, I think.

AFAIK (corrections welcome) SPARQL will not return OWL (or RDFS) 
inferences. However, if you run a reasoner (e.g. Pellet, KOAN2, Racer, 
FACT ++) over the rdf graph, then it will make new inferences, and then 
you could query the inferred graph.

However, happily, Pellet contains a SPARQL query function that takes 
SPARQL queries and does the inferencing bit for you.

There is an OWL-QL (http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/projects/owl-ql/) which 
has an implementation as a server, sitting in a jsp servlet container 
(e.g. Tomcat) if I remember correctly. However, the project and one it 
builds heavily on, the Java Theorem Prover (JTP) seem to be dead - esp. 
JTP, where there's no traffic on the list, and the authors don't reply 
to emails.

My suggestion would be Pellet.

HTH,
Matt

Cláudio Fernandes wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> I've recently bumped with some (naive?) questions about SPARQL and the
> OWL language:
> 
> We know that SPARQL is a query language for RDF [1], and that the owl
> language [2] is a vocabulary extension of RDF. Put it that way, is
> SPARQL "big" enough to query correctly an ontology described by the owl
> language? If it isn't, what is the "main" query language to do that, if
> any exist? OWL-QL?    
> 
> The bottom line is: if i want to build a semantic web agent, capable of
> querying an ontology, should i bet in rdf + SPARQL? or owl + ?? 
> Will i be betting in the wrong horse if i go through the owl language
> only and discard the potentialities of SPARQL? Or I'm i really confused
> and the truth is in rdf/owl + SPARQL? And which are my limits in this
> case?  
> 
> thanks in advance for your time/thoughts, 
> 
> [1] - http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-rdf-sparql-query-20060220/
> [2] - http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-features-20040210/
> 

-- 
Dr. M. Williams MRCP(UK)
Clinical Research Fellow,
Cancer Research UK
+44 (0)7834 899570

Received on Saturday, 18 March 2006 13:59:02 UTC