Querying Compressed Knowledge Bases in Pervasive Computing

In the so-called Semantic Web of Things (SWoT), annotated information is tied/derived to/from micro-devices, such as RFID tags and wireless sensors, deployed in an environment. Compression techniques are so needed, due to the verbosity of semantic XML-based languages. Beyond compression ratio, query efficiency is a key aspect for knowledge discovery in mobile ad-hoc scenarios where resources are constrained and topology is unpredictable. This paper proposes a querying schema for OWL knowledge bases, serialized in RDF/XML syntax and homomorphically compressed. The final goal is to allow query evaluation without requiring decompression. Algorithms are presented to prove the feasibility of the proposed approach, while practical examples highlight its usefulness.