Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ontology Visual Querying

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 179 Accesses

Definition

An ontology definition language provides constructs that can be used to describe concepts and the relationships in which they participate. Because such languages define the properties concepts can exhibit, they can be used to restrict the questions that can meaningfully be asked about the concepts. Given a specification of the questions that can legitimately be asked, a user interface can direct query construction tasks towards meaningful requests, which in turn are expected to yield non-empty answers. Thus ontology visual querying is the use of an ontology to direct interactive query construction. A related topic is faceted browsing, in which the incremental description of concepts of interest is closely integrated with retrieval, thereby providing information about the results of a request as it is being constructed.

Historical Background

The history of visual query languages is almost as long as that of textual query languages, with Query-by-Example [14] developed in...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Antoniou G, van Harmelen F. A semantic web primer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baader F, Calvanese D, McGuinness D, Nardi D, Patel-Schneider P, editors. The description logic handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2003.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Calvanese D, De Giacomo G, Lenzerini M, Nardi D, Rosati R. Data integration in data warehousing. Int J Coop Inf Syst. 2001;10(3):237–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Catarci T, Costabile MF, Levialdi S, Batín C. Visual query systems for databases: a survey. J Vis Lang Comput. 1997;8(2):215–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Catarci T, Dongilli P, Di Mascio T, Franconi E, Santucci G, Tessaris S. An ontology based visual tool for query formulation support. In: Proceding of 16th European Conference on AI; 2004. p. 308–12.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Colucci S, Noia TD, Sciascio ED, Donini FM, Ragone A, Rizzi R. A semantic-based fully visual application for matchmaking and query refinement in B2C e-marketplaces. In: Proceeding of 8th ACM Internatioal Conference on Electronic Commerce; 2006. p. 174–84.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Goble CA, Stevens R, Ng G, Bechhofer S, Paton NW, Baker PG, Peim M, Brass A. Transparent access to multiple bioinformatics information sources. IBM Syst J. 2001;40(2):532–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hildebrand M, van Ossenbruggen J, Hardman L./facet: a browser for heterogeneous semantic web repositories. In: Proceeding of 5th International Semantic Web Conference; 2006. p. 272–85.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hyvyonen E, Myakelya E, Salminen M, Valo A, Viljanen K, Saarela S, Junnila M, Kettula S. Museum Finland – Finnish museums on the semantic web. J Web Semant. 2005;3(2):224–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Knublauch H, Fergerson RW, Noy NF, Musen MA. The protégé OWL plugin: an open development environment for semantic web applications. In: Proceeding of 3rd International Semantic Web Conference; 2004. p. 229–43.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Schreiber G, et al. MultimediaN E-culture demonstrator. In: Proceeding of 5th International Semantic Web Conference; 2006. p. 951–8.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Shneiderman B. Dynamic queries for visual information seeking. IEEE Softw. 1994;11(6):70–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Yee K-P, Swearingen K, Li K, Hearst MA. Faceted metadata for image search and browsing. In: Proceeding of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; 2003. p. 401–8.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Zloof MM. Query-by-example: the invocation and definition of tables and forms. In: Proceeding of 1st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases; 1975. p. 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Sean Bechhofer & Norman W. Paton

Authors
  1. Sean Bechhofer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Norman W. Paton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sean Bechhofer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale, Universita di Roma, Via Ariosto 25, Roma, 185, Italy

    Tiziana Catarci

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Bechhofer, S., Paton, N.W. (2016). Ontology Visual Querying. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_256-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_256-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation