Regular paths in SparQL: querying the NCI Thesaurus
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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Modeling the Functional Network for Spatial Navigation in the Human Brain
Published on: October 13, 2023
Landon T Detwiler1, Dan Suciu, James F Brinkley
1Structural Informatics Group, Departments of Biological Structure, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Abstract:
OWL, the Web Ontology Language, provides syntax and semantics for representing knowledge for the semantic web. Many of the constructs of OWL have a basis in the field of description logics. While the formal underpinnings of description logics have lead to a highly computable language, it has come at a cognitive cost. OWL ontologies are often unintuitive to readers lacking a strong logic background. In this work we describe GLEEN, a regular path expression library, which extends the RDF query language SparQL to support complex path expressions over OWL and other RDF-based ontologies. We illustrate the utility of GLEEN by showing how it can be used in a query-based approach to defining simpler, more intuitive views of OWL ontologies. In particular we show how relatively simple GLEEN-enhanced SparQL queries can create views of the OWL version of the NCI Thesaurus that match the views generated by the web-based NCI browser.
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