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sparqlsemanticsmarklogic

MarkLogic 8 - SPARQL - Follow synonym chain

Let's say I have lots of ontologies with synonyms.

<term>
  <word>cat</word>
  <synonyms>
    <synonym>feline</synonym>
  </synonyms>
</term>
<term>
  <word>feline></word>
  <synonyms>
    <synonym>kitty</synonym>
  <synonyms>
</term>

How can I write a SPARQL query such that I can give it the word cat and it will give me all the synonyms of cat as well as all the synonyms of the synonyms of cat

I don't know if there's a way to do this recursively or if you have to specify each level.

Solution

  • To use SPARQL, you would need to represent this data as triples. Someone who knows ontologies better would come up with better IRIs, but something like (as represented inside MarkLogic): 

    <triple>
  <subject>http://marklogic.com/scope#cat</subject>
  <predicate>http://marklogic.com/term</predicate>
  <object>cat</object>
</triple>
<triple>
  <subject>http://marklogic.com/scope#cat</subject>
  <predicate>http://marklogic.com/synonym</predicate>
  <object>feline</object>
</triple>
<triple>
  <subject>http://marklogic.com/scope#cat</subject>
  <predicate>http://marklogic.com/synonym</predicate>
  <object>kitty</object>
</triple>

    Note that the meanings of my triples do not exactly match what you had, but hopefully close enough to make the point. With triples, you could then do a SPARQL query like:

    select ?term
where {
  <http://marklogic.com/scope#cat> <http://marklogic.com/synonym> ?term
}

    which should return "feline" and "kitty".