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Distributed processing of regular path queries in RDF graphs

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Abstract

SPARQL 1.1 offers a type of navigational query for RDF systems, called regular path query (RPQ). A regular path query allows for retrieving node pairs with the paths between them satisfying regular expressions. Regular path queries are always difficult to be evaluated efficiently because of the possible large search space. Thus there has been no scalable and practical solution so far. In this paper, we present Leon+, an in-memory distributed framework, to address the RPQ problem in the context of the knowledge graph. To reduce search space and mitigate mounting communication costs, Leon+ takes advantage of join-ahead pruning via a novel RDF summarization technique together with a path partitioning strategy. We also develop a subtle cost model to devise query plans to achieve high efficiency for complex RPQs. As there has been no available RPQ benchmark, we create micro-benchmarks on both synthetic and real-world datasets. A thorough experimental evaluation is presented between our approach and the state-of-the-art RDF stores. The results show that our approach outperforms 5x faster than the competitors on single RPQ. For query workload, it saves up to 1/2 time and 2/3 communication overheads over the baseline method.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China No.U19A2059, the National Key Research and Development Program of China No.2019YFB2101902, and National Natural Science Foundation of China Nos. 61532015 and 61672189.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China

    Xintong Guo, Hong Gao & Zhaonian Zou

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  1. Xintong Guo
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  2. Hong Gao
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Correspondence to Hong Gao.

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This paper is an extended version of our previous conference paper [26].

Appendices

Appendix

LUBM RPQ

prefix rdf:<http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>

prefix ub: <http://www.lehigh.edu/~zhp2/2004/0401/univ-bench.owl#>

Q1: SELECT * WHERE {?x ub:subOrganizationOf+ ?y. }

Q2: SELECT * WHERE {?x ub:worksFor/ub:subOrganizationOf+ ?y. }

Q3: SELECT * WHERE {?x ub:headOf/ub:subOrganizationOf+/ub:name ?y . }

Q4: SELECT * WHERE {?x (ub:headOf|ub:subOrganizationOf|ub:memberOf)+ ?y . }

Q5: SELECT * WHERE { ?x rdf:type ub:ResearchGroup . ?x ub:subOrganizationOf+ ?y. ?y rdf:type ub: University. }

Q6: SELECT * WHERE { ?x rdf:type ub:FullProfessor. ?x ub:headOf ?d. ?d ub: subOrganizationOf+ ?y. ?y rdf:type ub:University. }

Q7: SELECT * WHERE { ?r1 rdf:type ub:ResearchGroup . ?r1 ub:subOrganizationOf+ ?y. ?y rdf:type ub:University . ?r2 rdf:type ub:ResearchGroup. ?r2 ub:subOrganizationOf+ ?y. }

YAGO2 RPQ

base <http://yago-knowledge.org/resource/>

Q1: SELECT * WHERE {?x hasCapital+ ?y . }

Q2: SELECT * WHERE {?x hasAcademicAdvisor+ ?y . }

Q3: SELECT * WHERE {?x created+ ?y . }

Q4: SELECT * WHERE {?x hasChild+ ?y . }

Q5: SELECT * WHERE {?x influences+ ?y . }

Q6: SELECT * WHERE {?x dealsWith+/hasCapital+ ?y . }

Q7: SELECT * WHERE {?x influences+/isMarriedTo+ ?y . }

Q8: SELECT * WHERE {?x isMarriedTo+/hasChild+ ?y . }

Q9: SELECT * WHERE {?x isKnownFor+/isMarriedTo+/hasChild+ ?y . }

Q10: SELECT * WHERE {?x happenedIn+/dealsWith+/hasCapital+ ?y . }

Q11: SELECT * WHERE {?x (isConnectedTo/isLocatedIn/owns)+ ?y . }

Q12: SELECT * WHERE {?x (dealsWith/participatedIn/ isLocatedIn)+ ?y . }

Q13: SELECT * WHERE {?x (isLeaderOf/dealsWith/ participatedIn)+ ?y . }

Q14: SELECT * WHERE {?x (happenedIn|hasCapital |participatedIn)+ ?y . }

Q15: SELECT * WHERE {?x isCitizenOf/dealsWith+/ hasCapital ?y . }

Q16: SELECT * WHERE {?x isLocatedIn+ ?r. ?x (dealsWith/hasCapital/isLocatedIn)+ ?y.}

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Guo, X., Gao, H. & Zou, Z. Distributed processing of regular path queries in RDF graphs. Knowl Inf Syst 63, 993–1027 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-020-01536-2

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