title: Regular paths in SparQL: querying the NCI Thesaurus.
abstract: OWL, the Web Ontology Language, provides syntax and semantics for representing knowledge for the semantic web. Many of the constructs of OWL have a basis in the field of description logics. While the formal underpinnings of description logics have lead to a highly computable language, it has come at a cognitive cost. OWL ontologies are often unintuitive to readers lacking a strong logic background. In this work we describe GLEEN, a regular path expression library, which extends the RDF query language SparQL to support complex path expressions over OWL and other RDF-based ontologies. We illustrate the utility of GLEEN by showing how it can be used in a query-based approach to defining simpler, more intuitive views of OWL ontologies. In particular we show how relatively simple GLEEN-enhanced SparQL queries can create views of the OWL version of the NCI Thesaurus that match the views generated by the web-based NCI browser.
authors.affiliation: Structural Informatics Group, Departments of Biological Structure, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
authors.forename: Landon T
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Detwiler
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Suciu
authors.forename: James F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Brinkley
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D012660:Semantics; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled