Enhancing the viewing, browsing and searching of knowledge graphs with virtual properties

What is it about?

Adequate means for easily viewing, browsing and searching knowledge graphs (KGs) are a crucial, still limiting factor. Therefore, this paper presents virtual properties as valuable UI concept for ontologies and KGs able to improve these issues. Virtual properties provide shortcuts on a KG that can enrich the scope of a class with other information beyond its direct neighborhood. Virtual properties can be defined as enhancements of SHACL property shapes. Their values are computed on demand via SPARQL queries. An approach is demonstrated that can help to identify suitable virtual property candidates. Virtual properties can be realized as integral functionality of generic, frame-based UIs, which can automatically provide views and masks for viewing and searching a KG. The virtual property approach has been implemented at Bosch and is usable by more than 100,000 Bosch employees in a productive deployment, which proves the maturity and relevance of the approach for Bosch. It has successfully been demonstrated that virtual properties can significantly improve KG UIs by enriching the scope of a class with information beyond its direct neighborhood. SHACL-defined virtual properties and their automatic identification are a novel concept. To our knowledge, no such approach has been established nor standardized so far.

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