A Text-based Query Interface to OWL Ontologies

Accessing structured data in the form of ontologies requires training and learning formal query languages (e.g., SeRQL or SPARQL) which poses significant difficulties for non-expert users. One of the ways to lower the learning overhead and make ontology queries more straightforward is through a Natural Language Interface (NLI). While there are existing NLIs to structured data with reasonable performance, they tend to require expensive customisation to each new domain or ontology. Additionally, they often require specific adherence to a pre-defined syntax which, in turn, means that users still have to undergo training. In this paper we present Question-based Interface to Ontologies (QuestIO) - a tool for querying ontologies using unconstrained language-based queries. QuestIO has a very simple interface, requires no user training and can be easily embedded in any system or used with any ontology or knowledge base without prior customisation.