eSPARQL: Representing and Reconciling Agnostic and Atheistic Beliefs in RDF-star Knowledge Graphs
This work addresses a specific problem in knowledge representation for researchers and practitioners dealing with epistemic metadata in RDF-star graphs, representing an incremental advancement in query language design.
The paper tackles the lack of semantics and querying capabilities for RDF-star statements in knowledge graphs by proposing eSPARQL, a query language based on four-valued logic that extends SPARQL-star to handle multiple and conflicting beliefs, demonstrating its ability to express four use case queries.
Over the past few years, we have seen the emergence of large knowledge graphs combining information from multiple sources. Sometimes, this information is provided in the form of assertions about other assertions, defining contexts where assertions are valid. A recent extension to RDF which admits statements over statements, called RDF-star, is in revision to become a W3C standard. However, there is no proposal for a semantics of these RDF-star statements nor a built-in facility to operate over them. In this paper, we propose a query language for epistemic RDF-star metadata based on a four-valued logic, called eSPARQL. Our proposed query language extends SPARQL-star, the query language for RDF-star, with a new type of FROM clause to facilitate operating with multiple and sometimes conflicting beliefs. We show that the proposed query language can express four use case queries, including the following features: (i) querying the belief of an individual, (ii) the aggregating of beliefs, (iii) querying who is conflicting with somebody, and (iv) beliefs about beliefs (i.e., nesting of beliefs).