Representing and Querying Validity Time in RDF and OWL: A Logic-Based Approach

RDF(S) and OWL 2 can currently represent only static information. In practice, however, the truth of statements often changes with time. Semantic Web applications often need to represent such changes and reason about them. In this paper we present a logic-based approach for representing validity time in RDF(S) and OWL 2. Unlike the existing proposals, our approach is applicable to nondeterministic entailment relations and/or entailment relations that involve existential quantification, such as the OWL 2 Direct Entailment and the OWL 2 RDF-Based Entailment. We also present an extension of SPARQL that can be used to query temporal RDF(S) and OWL 2. Moreover, we present a general query evaluation algorithm that can be used with all entailment relations used in the Semantic Web. Finally, we present two optimizations of the algorithm that are applicable to entailment relations characterized by a set of deterministic rules, such RDF(S) and OWL 2 RL/RDF Entailment.