Using CIDOC CRM for dynamically querying ArSol, a relational database, from the Semantic Web
Résumé
In the MASA Consortium ("Memory of Archaeologists and Archaeological Sites") context, we propose to open the ArSol database, a system for processing archaeological data, to the semantic web, using the CIDOC-CRM ontology and tools that implements Ontology-Based Data Access (OBDA) principles. After designing a set of mappings from a selection of ArSol fields to the CIDOC CRM ontology, we implement the software architecture to query ArSol from a SPARQL endpoint. We used ‒ontop‒, a Protégé plugin, to design the OBDA mappings that are necessary for the SPARQL-to-SQL rewritings. Our final goal is to devise an application that will offer a single interface to query several distributed and independent archaeological databases, with heterogeneous structures, using CIDOC-CRM to relate them to each other. Querying ArSol in SPARQL via the CIDOC CRM is an important step towards this goal.