Storing and Querying Fuzzy Knowledge in the Semantic Web Using FiRE

An important problem for the success of ontology-based applications is how to provide persistent storage and querying. For that purpose, many RDF tools capable of storing and querying over a knowledge base, have been proposed. Recently, fuzzy extensions to ontology languages have gained considerable attention especially due to their ability to handle vague information. In this paper we investigate on the issue of using classical RDF storing systems in order to provide persistent storing and querying over large scale fuzzy information. To accomplish this we propose a novel way for serializing fuzzy information into RDF triples, thus classical storing systems can be used without any extensions. Additionally, we extend the existing query languages of RDF stores in order to support expressive fuzzy querying services over the stored data. All our extensions have been implemented in FiRE—an expressive fuzzy DL reasoner that supports the language fuzzy-SHIN . Finally, the proposed architecture is evaluated using an industrial application scenario about casting for TV commercials and spots.