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Semantic Web Query Languages

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Web query languages; Ontology query languages

Definition

A number of formalisms have been proposed for representing data and meta data on the Semantic Web. In particular, RDF, Topic Maps and OWL allow one to describe relationships between data items, such as concept hierarchies and relations between the concepts. A key requirement for the Semantic Web is integrated access to data represented in any of these formalisms, as well the ability to also access data in the formalisms of the “standard Web,” such as (X)HTML and XML. This data access is the objective of Semantic Web query languages. A wide range of query languages for the Semantic Web exist, ranging from (i) pure “selection languages” with only limited expressivity, to fully-fledged reasoning languages, and (ii) from query languages restricted to a certain data representation format, such as XML or RDF, to general purpose languages that support multiple data representation formats and allow simultaneous querying of data...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    James Bailey

  2. University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    François Bry & Tim Furche

  3. Salzburg Research, Salzburg, Austria

    Sebastian Schaffert

Authors
  1. James Bailey
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  2. François Bry
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  3. Tim Furche
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  4. Sebastian Schaffert
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Bailey, J., Bry, F., Furche, T., Schaffert, S. (2009). Semantic Web Query Languages. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1317

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