Applied Temporal RDF: Efficient Temporal Querying of RDF Data with SPARQL

Many applications operate on time-sensitive data. Some of these data are only valid for certain intervals (e.g., job-assignments, versions of software code), others describe temporal events that happened at certain points in time (e.g., a person's birthday). Until recently, the only way to incorporate time into Semantic Web models was as a data type property. Temporal RDF, however, considers time as an additional dimension in data preserving the semantics of time. In this paper we present a syntax and storage format based on named graphs to express temporal RDF. Given the restriction to preexisting RDF-syntax, our approach can perform any temporal query using standard SPARQL syntax only. For convenience, we introduce a shorthand format called -SPARQL for temporal queries and show how -SPARQL queries can be translated to standard SPARQL. Additionally, we show that, depending on the underlying data's nature, the temporal RDF approach vastly reduces the number of triples by elim...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: ESWS
• Authors: Jonas Tappolet, Abraham Bernstein
• Keywords: ESWS 2009, Internet Technology, Semantic Web Models, Temporal Rdf, Temporal Rdf Approach