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Ontology-based data access: An application to intermodal logistics

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate ontology-based data access (OBDA) to build information systems whose purposes are (i) gathering data from a network of intermodal terminals, and (ii) computing performance indicators of the network. This application domain is characterized by large amounts of data and relatively simple data models, making it a natural challenge for logic-based knowledge representation and reasoning techniques. Considering relational database (RDB) technology as a yardstick, we show that careful engineering of OBDA can achieve RDB-like scalability even in demanding applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the potential of OBDA in a typical business-size application.

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Notes

  1. The site www.mind-lab.it/~gcicala/isf2012/ contains al the results of our experimental analysis, as well as ontologies, databases, simulator and code required to replicate our analysis.

  2. See http://www.ilog.it/ for more information about I.LOG and metrocargo ®.

  3. Our work is based on protégé 4.1 and Pellet 2.3.0.

  4. Complexity of reasoning within OWL 2 semantics is detailed at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-profiles/#Computational_Properties. It is worth noticing that in full OWL 2 the computational complexity of conjunctive query answering is yet to be determined, but it is unlikely to be low.

  5. In the case of date/time, this amounts to set a reference date and time, and consider time elapsed since that date.

  6. Both the RBD schema, i.e., tables in mySQL syntax, and the ontology Tbox, i.e., XML file containing OWL 2 assertions, are available on the companion site of the paper.

  7. See Eker et al. (2003) and the website http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/. Our work is based on Ptolemy 8.0.1.

  8. The full model Simulator built in Ptolemy is available at the companion site of the paper, together with the Java code for Controller and instructions to perform the simulation.

  9. Our work is based on mySQL 5.1. The dump of a database containing a 15-days long simulation is available at the companion site of the paper.

  10. The full listing of SQL queries can be downloaded from the companion site of the paper.

  11. Notice that a Passing event does not involve any actual handling of ITUs, since these events record ITUs passing by the terminal along their journey. If needed, Passing events can be removed by the application, or by adding a clause to the WHERE statement.

  12. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema11-2/ for a listing of XML Schema datatype and their description.

  13. See the official Jena web site at http://jena.apache.org/documentation/ for an introduction to Jena.

  14. An XML/RDF file populated with the results of a 15-days long simulation is available at the companion site of the paper.

  15. The authoritative reference about RDF semantics is at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/.

  16. See http://clarkparsia.com/pellet/faq/answering-queries/ and http://clarkparsia.com/pellet/faq/what-is-an-abox-query/.

  17. H2 Database Engine http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html.

  18. The type owl:NamedIndividual is used in OWL to declare named (i.e. non-anonymous) individuals. Since it is a type whereto each individual belongs, it is non informative in this context.

  19. Notice that SPARQL 1.0 is the current W3C recommendation.

  20. The full listing of queries for ARQ, Pellet and Quest can be downloaded from the companion site of the paper.

  21. This is a simplification, because in ITUs come in different sizes, and a real car may transport up to two ITUs.

  22. The complete set of results is available at the companion site of the paper.

  23. http://swat.cse.lehigh.edu/projects/lubm/

  24. However, it should be mentioned that Jena uses a kind of materialization approach to support RDFS inteferences during query answering. Therefore ARQ executes the KPI queries over an extended Abox which gets computed transparently at load time.

  25. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/semantic-tech/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Bioingegneria, Robotica e Ingegneria dei Sistemi (DIBRIS), Scuola Politecnica, Università degli Studi di Genova, Via Opera Pia 13, 16145, Genova, Italy

    Matteo Casu, Giuseppe Cicala & Armando Tacchella

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  1. Matteo Casu
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  2. Giuseppe Cicala
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  3. Armando Tacchella
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Correspondence to Armando Tacchella.

Additional information

This work is partially supported by Regione Liguria and Medservice. com s.r.l. in the context of the grant “Bando Azione 1.2.2—Ricerca Industriale e Sviluppo Sperimentale—N.76—Sistemi di Rappresentazione e Ragionamento basati su Ontologie per la Diagnostica e Manutenzione di Architetture di Automazione Distribuite”. Matteo Casu is supported by a PhD grant from Fondazione CARIGE, and Giuseppe Cicala is partially supported by a grant from Bombardier Transportation Italy. The authors wish to thank I.LOG s.r.l. for supplying the case study, Fabio Tarantino for helpful discussions and validation of the simulator, and Luca Filippozzi for designing and implementing the user interface of the simulator used in the experimental analysis. We gratefully acknowledge Mariano Rodriguez Muro for providing many valuable insights on QUEST, and the anonymous reviewers who helped us to improve the original manuscript.

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Casu, M., Cicala, G. & Tacchella, A. Ontology-based data access: An application to intermodal logistics. Inf Syst Front 15, 849–871 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-012-9395-4

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