Chapter 6 – RDF and inferencing

Publisher Summary RDF provides a way to represent data so that information from multiple sources can be brought together and treated as if they came from a single source. But when we want to use that data, the differences in those sources comes out. The Semantic Web provides an approach to this problem in the form of modeling languages in which the relationship between data sources can be described. A modeling construct’s meaning is given by the pattern of inferences that can be drawn from it. Inferencing is the process by which new triples are systematically added to a graph based on patterns in existing triples. Information integration can be achieved by invoking inferencing before or during the query process; a query returns not only the asserted data but also inferred information. This inferred information can draw on more than one data source. It is seen that simple inferencing can provide value for data integration.