A Review of SHACL: From Data Validation to Schema Reasoning for RDF Graphs

Paolo Pareti, George Konstantinidis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPaper published in a conference proceedingspeer-review

Abstract

We present an introduction and a review of the Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL), the W3C recommendation language for validating RDF data. A SHACL document describes a set of constraints on RDF nodes, and a graph is valid with respect to the document if its nodes satisfy these constraints. We revisit the basic concepts of the language, its constructs and components and their interaction. We review the different formal frameworks used to study this language and the different semantics proposed. We examine a number of related problems, from containment and satisfiability to the interaction of SHACL with inference rules, and exhibit how different modellings of the language are useful for different problems. We also cover practical aspects of SHACL, discussing its implementations and state of adoption, to present a holistic review useful to practitioners and theoreticians alike.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationReasoning Web. Declarative Artificial Intelligence - 17th International Summer School 2021, Tutorial Lectures
EditorsMantas Šimkus, Ivan Varzinczak
PublisherSpringer International Publishing AG
Pages115-144
Number of pages30
ISBN (Electronic)9783030954819
ISBN (Print)9783030954802
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Publication series

NameReasoning Web. Declarative Artificial Intelligence
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
ISSN (Print)0302-9743

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