Ontology−Based Semantic Search on the Web and its Combination with the Power of Inductive Reasoning

Abstract

Semantic Web search is currently one of the hottest research topics in both Web search and the Semantic Web. In previous work, we have presented a novel approach to Semantic Web search, which allows for evaluating ontology-based complex queries that involve reasoning over the Web relative to an underlying background ontology. We have developed the formal model behind this approach, and provided a technique for processing Semantic Web search queries, which consists of an offline ontological inference step and an online reduction to standard Web search. In this paper, we continue this line of research. We further enhance the above approach by the use of inductive rather than deductive reasoning in the offline inference step. This increases the robustness of Semantic Web search, as it adds the important ability to handle inconsistencies, noise, and incompleteness, which are all very likely to occur in distributed and heterogeneous environments such as the Web. The inductive variant also allows to infer new (not logically deducible) knowledge (from training individuals). We report on a prototype implementation of (both the deductive and) the inductive variant of our approach in desktop search, and we provide extensive new experimental results, especially on the running time and the precision and the recall of our new approach.