Querying OWL Ontologies with OWL Syntax

Querying OWL Ontologies with OWL Syntax
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Writing SPARQL queries for OWL can be time-consuming for those who do not do it everyday. Therefore, 
Mark Schneider has built a handy language, allowing users to write queries using OWL syntax -- 
SPARQLAS. These queries are translated into SPARQL queries that can be executed in a SPARQL engine 
that supports the OWL DL entailment regime, e.g., pellet.

The syntax is simple: You use the OWL Functional Syntax or a shortened version of it, and you can 
use variables wherever you have an entity (Class, Datatype, ObjectProperty, DataProperty, 
NamedIndividual) or a literal. You can construct nested expressions that use these variables.


Example
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All subclasses of pizza that have as topping some topping with spiciness hot.

In SPARQLAS OWL Functional Syntax:
Namespace ( = <http://www.co-ode.org/ontologies/pizza/pizza.owl#> )
Query (
   SubClassOf ( ?x ObjectIntersectionOf ( Pizza ObjectSomeValuesFrom ( hasTopping 
ObjectIntersectionOf ( PizzaTopping ObjectSomeValuesFrom ( hasSpiciness Hot ) ) ) ) )
)

In SPARQLAS Shortened Functional Syntax:
Namespace ( = <http://www.co-ode.org/ontologies/pizza/pizza.owl#> )
Query (
   SubClassOf ( ?x And ( Pizza Some ( hasTopping And ( PizzaTopping Some (hasSpiciness Hot ) ) ) ) )
)

You can try it in two different ways
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* Web: A HTML client with many examples is available on 
http://twouse.west.uni-koblenz.de/services/sparqlas2sparql.php

* TwoUse Toolkit: The query language is distributed as part of the TwoUse toolkit. More information 
on http://twouse.googlecode.com/


Integrate it in your application
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* Web Service. Translating SPARQLAS into SPARQL is available as web service under 
http://twouse.west.uni-koblenz.de:8080/services/sparqlas2sparql?wsdl .

* Standalone: The standalone bundle for java is available on 
http://code.google.com/p/twouse/downloads/list


With best regards,

Fernando Silva Parreiras
TwoUse Development Team
http://west.uni-koblenz.de/twouse
SIG Software Web
Institute for Web Science Technologies
University of Koblenz-Landau
Universitaetstrasse 1, B114
56070 Koblenz
+49 (0)261 287 2786
http://west.uni-koblenz.de

Received on Monday, 22 February 2010 15:44:59 UTC