SoftFacts: A top-k retrieval engine for ontology mediated access to relational databases

—We outline SoftFacts, an ontology mediated top-k information retrieval system over relational databases. An ontology layer is used to define (in terms of a OWL-QL like Semantic uage) the relevant abstract concepts and relations of the application domain, while graded facts are stored into a relational database. Queries are conjunctive queries with ranking aggregates and scoring functions and the results of a query may be ranked according to user defined scoring functions. We will illustrate SoftFacts’ architecture, the representation and the query language, sketch the reasoning algorithms of the SoftFacts system and its Prot´eg´e plug-in.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SMC
• Authors: Umberto Straccia
• Keywords: Control Systems, Relational Database, Relevant Abstract Concepts, SMC 2010, Top-k Information Retrieval