Is it possible to infer new knowledge about an ontology only from a query in SPARQL?
I have a question about the use of the SPARQL language about ontologies. So far I have thought that SPARQL is the equivalent to the SQL language in the relational databases, that is to say, that with SPARQL it is only possible to consult the data that are explicitly in the ontology, without having access to the data that can be inferred , leaving the responsibility of the inference to the reasoners.
However, I have read documents from which I infer that SPARQL does have the capacity to infer implicit and non-explicit knowledge in the ontology. Is my inference true? That is, is it possible to infer knowledge through a SPARQL query without the need for a reasoner? If the answer is true, then what advantages does the use of a reasoner have over the use of SPARQL?
Greetings, Manuel Puebla.
Yes, on-the-fly inference may be a feature of the SPARQL processor, so you can get the benefits of inference/reasoning directly from a SPARQL query. (See Virtuoso SPARQL endpoints inference rules for some discussion of how this is done in Virtuoso, for example.)