R-DEVICE

R-DEVICE is a deductive object-oriented knowledge base system for querying and reasoning about RDF metadata. R-DEVICE, transforms RDF triples into objects and uses a deductive rule language for querying and reasoning about them.

More specifically, R-DEVICE imports RDF data into the CLIPS production rule system as COOL objects. The main difference between the RDF and our object model is that properties are treated both as first-class objects and as attributes of resource objects. In this way resource properties are gathered together in one object, resulting in superior query performance than the performance of a triple-based query model. Most other RDF storage and querying systems that are based on a triple model scatter resource properties across several triples and they require several joins to query the properties of a single resource.

The descriptive semantics of RDF data may call for dynamic redefinitions of resource classes and objects, which are handled by R-DEVICE.

R-DEVICE features a powerful deductive rule language which is able to express arbitrary queries both on the RDF schema and data, including generalized path expressions, stratified negation, aggregate, grouping, and sorting, functions, mainly due to the second-order syntax of the rule language, i.e. variables ranging over class and slot names, which is efficiently translated into sets of first-order logic rules using metadata. Furthermore, R-DEVICE rules define views which are materialized and incrementally maintained. Finally, users can use CLIPS functions or can define their own arbitrary functions using the CLIPS host language.

The deductive rule language of R-DEVICE is actually a re-implementation of the X-DEVICE language in CLIPS.

• Download R-DEVICE source code, manual, and example queries.
• R-DEVICE user and installation manual.
• Open Directory Project (ODP) example queries
• Example Queries taken from the RDF Query and Rule languages Use Cases and Examples survey.

Relevant Publications

• N. Bassiliades, I. Vlahavas, “Capturing RDF Descriptive Semantics in an Object Oriented Knowledge Base System”, Proc. 12th Int. WWW Conf. (WWW2003) , ACM, CDROM (Poster), Budapest, Hungary, May 2003.
• N. Bassiliades, I. Vlahavas, “R-DEVICE: A Deductive RDF Rule Language”, Workshop on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (RuleML 2004), G. Antoniou, H. Boley (Ed.), Springer-Verlag, Hiroshima, Japan, 8 Nov. 2004.
• N. Bassiliades, I. Vlahavas, “R-DEVICE: An Object-Oriented Knowledge Base System for RDF Metadata”, International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, Amit Sheth , Miltiadis D. Lytras (Ed.), Idea Group, Vol. 2, No. 2 (to appear), 2006.

For any comments regarding this page contact Nick Bassiliades.