Towards Fuzzy Query-Relaxation for RDF

摘要

In this paper, we argue that query relaxation over RDF data is an important but largely overlooked research topic: the Semantic Web standards allow for answering crisp queries over crisp RDF data, but what of use-cases that require approximate answers for fuzzy queries over crisp data? We introduce a use-case from an EADS project that aims to aggregate intelligence information for police post-incident analysis. Query relaxation is needed to match incomplete descriptions of entities involved in crimes to structured descriptions thereof. We first discuss the use-case, formalise the problem, and survey current literature for possible approaches. We then present a proof-of-concept framework for enabling relaxation of structured entity-lookup queries, evaluating different distance measures for performing relaxation. We argue that beyond our specific scenario, query relaxation is important to many potential use-cases for Semantic Web technologies, and worthy of more attention.