Optimizing RDF Stream Processing for Uncertainty Management

Abstract

RDF Stream Processing (RSP) has been proposed as a way of bridging the gap between the Complex Event Processing (CEP) paradigm and the Semantic Web standards. Uncertainty has been recognized as a critical aspect in CEP, but it has received little attention within the context of RSP. In this paper, we investigate the impact of different RSP optimization strategies for uncertainty management. The paper describes (1) an extension of the RSP-QL⋆ data model to capture bind expressions, filter expressions, and uncertainty functions; (2) optimization techniques related to lazy variables and caching of uncertainty functions, and a heuristic for reordering uncertainty filters in query plans; and (3) an evaluation of these strategies in a prototype implementation. The results show that using a lazy variable mechanism for uncertainty functions can improve query execution performance by orders of magnitude while introducing negligible overhead. The results also show that caching uncertainty function results can improve performance under most conditions, but that maintaining this cache can potentially add overhead to the overall query execution process. Finally, the effect of the proposed heuristic on query execution performance was shown to depend on multiple factors, including the selectivity of uncertainty filters, the size of intermediate results, and the cost associated with the evaluation of the uncertainty functions.