Tutorial
"RDF and SPARQL, the Next Chapter(s)"
Abstract: Knowledge graphs have become a cornerstone for data-driven enterprises,powering applications such as data catalogs, semantic search, digital twins, and conversational agents. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a comprehensive family of standards for representing and exchanging such knowledge graphs. The related SPARQL standards complement the framework with languages and protocols focused on querying RDF-based knowledge graphs and on interacting with RDF stores. Currently, more than a decade after the release of version 1.1 of these standards, RDF and SPARQL are being updated to version 1.2, which will bring a powerful new reification feature for making statements about statements.
In the first part of this tutorial, I will introduce RDF and SPARQL, with a specific focus on the new 1.2 features. Thereafter, I will briefly highlight further RDF-related technologies that are currently also extended to cover version 1.2 of RDF (namely, SHACL and RML). I will then present additional extensions to RDF and SPARQL that we have developed and are hoping to integrate into future versions of the standards. Finally, to show a combination of these technologies in action, I will demonstrate a new query federation engine that builds on the presented standards and extensions to offer a purely declarative approach to virtual data integration.
Biography
Olaf is a Senior Associate Professor in Computer Science at Linköping University, Sweden. His research interests are in data management and data integration problems, with a focus on graph data, web data, and knowledge graphs. He has received several academic awards, most notably the 2015 SWSA Distinguished Dissertation Award, the 2019 SWSA Ten-Year Award, and nine best research paper awards. Olaf is regularly involved in the organization of international scientific conferences (ISWC, ESWC, CoopIS, etc.), and he served on numerous program committees. Additionally, he is currently an invited expert in a W3C Working Group for which he serves as a co-editor of the upcoming version 1.2 of the RDF and SPARQL standards.