R-DEVICE: A Deductive RDF Rule Language

N. Bassiliades, I. Vlahavas, “R-DEVICE: A Deductive RDF Rule Language”, Third International Workshop on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML 2004), G. Antoniou, H. Boley (Ed.), Springer-Verlag, LNCS 3323, pp. 65-80, Hiroshima, Japan, 8 Nov. 2004, 2004.

In this paper we present R-DEVICE, a deductive rule language for reasoning about RDF metadata. R-DEVICE includes features such as normal and generalized path expressions, stratified negation, aggregate, grouping, and sorting, functions. The rule language supports a second-order syntax, where variables can range over classes and properties. Users can define views which are materialized and incrementally maintained by translating deductive rules into a couple of CLIPS production rules. Users can choose between an OPS5/CLIPS-like or a RuleML-like syntax. R-DEVICE is based on a OO RDF data model, different than the established graph model, which maps resources to objects and encapsulates properties inside resource objects, as traditional OO attributes. In this way, less joins are required to access the properties of a single resource resulting in better inferencing/querying performance. The descriptive semantics of RDF may call for dynamic re-definitions of resource classes and objects, which are handled by R-DEVICE effectively.