Using Databases for Ontology Processing, Storage and Reasing in Common and Mobile Environments

This master thesis describes the currently available approaches to store and reason about ontologies using databases. The Meta-Inn Approach, an enhanced version of the already existing approaches, is presented. It consists of an import engine, which was developed using XSLT and SQL/PL and maps the ontology information contained in an OWL file to a fast processable and optimized database format. The second part of the Meta-Inn implementation is the reasoning engine, which is able to derive new facts out of an existing ontology. It is implemented in SQL as well and uses common OWL inference rules. The second part of this document is concerned with the possibilities of using ontologies on mobile devices and its difficulties. The potential of an implementation of the Meta-Inn Approach using mobile databases and the associated problems are also analysed.