Unified querying of ontology languages with the SIRUP ontology query API

Abstract

Ontology languages to represent ontologies exist in large numbers, and users who want to access or reuse ontologies can often be confronted with a language they do not know. Therefore, due to their great number, ontology languages are nowadays themselves a source of heterogeneity. In this paper, we present the SIRUP Ontology Query API (SOQA) that was developed for the SIRUP approach to semantic data integration [ZD04b]. SOQA is an ontology languageand platform-independent API for query access to ontological metadata and data that can be represented in a variety of ontology languages. Based on SOQA, we provide SOQA-QL, an SQL-like query language that supports declarative queries against ontological metadata and data, and the SOQA Browser, a tool to graphically inspect all ontology information that can be accessed through SOQA.