Do I really need OWL reasoning?

问题

I recently asked a question about the feasibility of loading about 10 million statements into a triplestore with OWL reasoning enabled.

That has lead to some StackOverflow comments as well as discussion within my research group about whether or not we really need OWL reasoning.

---

I'll start with a real-world query that doesn't seem to require OWL reasoning.

"41167-4120-0" is the NDC Code that identifies the commercial drug product "Fexofenadine hydrochloride 180 MG Oral Tablet [Allegra]" in the US.

A slightly modified version of the NDC appears as a label in the drug ontology (specifically file dron-ndc.owl):

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00604430 rdfs:label "41167412000"

DrON makes the following OWL assertions:

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00604430 is a packaged drug product 
    and is rdfs:subClass of 
    ( has_proper_part some http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00083688 )

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00083688 
    rdfs:subClassOf http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00062350

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/DRON_00062350 has_proper_part some 
    (scattered molecular aggregate  
    and (is bearer of some active ingredient) 
    and (is bearer of some (mass and 
    (has measurement unit label value milligram) 
    and (has specified value <value> ))) 
    and (has granular part some fexofenadine))

And ChEBI says:

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/CHEBI_5050 rdfs:label "fexofenadine"
    subClassOf (has role some anti-allergic agent)

and

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/CHEBI_50857 rdfs:label "anti-allergic agent"

So in order to link a NDC code and a therapeutic role, I can write a query like the following

PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX obo: <http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
select distinct 
?ndcval ?packdrugprod ?drugbrand ?brandlab ?drugform  ?api ?apilab ?drugrole
where {
    values ?ndcval {
        "41167412000" 
    }
    ?packdrugprod rdfs:subClassOf ?hasproppart ;
                  rdfs:label ?ndcval .
    ?hasproppart a owl:Restriction ;
                 owl:onProperty <http://www.obofoundry.org/ro/ro.owl#has_proper_part> ;
                 owl:someValuesFrom ?drugbrand .
    ?drugbrand rdfs:subClassOf ?drugform ;
               rdfs:label ?brandlab .
    ?drugform rdfs:subClassOf ?proppart .
    ?proppart a owl:Restriction ;
              owl:onProperty <http://www.obofoundry.org/ro/ro.owl#has_proper_part> ;
              owl:someValuesFrom ?valSource1 .
    ?valSource1 owl:intersectionOf ?intsect1 .
    # scat mol agg
    ?intsect1 rdf:first obo:OBI_0000576 .
    ?intsect1 rdf:rest ?scatmolag .
    ?scatmolag rdf:first ?bearacting .
    ?scatmolag rdf:rest ?intsect3 .
    # bearer of active ingredient
    ?bearacting a owl:Restriction ;
                owl:onProperty obo:BFO_0000053 ;
                owl:someValuesFrom obo:DRON_00000028 .
    ?intsect3 rdf:first ?granpart .
    ?intsect3 rdf:rest ?r .
    # has granular part fexofenadine
    ?granpart a owl:Restriction ;
              owl:onProperty obo:BFO_0000071 ;
              owl:someValuesFrom ?api .
    ?api rdfs:subClassOf ?rolerestr ;
         rdfs:label ?apilab .
    # has anti allergic role
    ?rolerestr a owl:Restriction ;
               owl:onProperty obo:RO_0000087 ;
               owl:someValuesFrom ?drugrole  .
    ?drugrole rdfs:label ?drlab .
    values ?drugrole {
        obo:CHEBI_50857 
    }
}

---

Concerns:

What about accessing nested subClass relationships without reasoning?

The example above was easy because fexofenadine is directly asserted to have the "anti-allergic" role

What if I am interested in people taking nitrate esters? Nitroglycerin is a nitroglycerol, which is in turn a nitrate ester. If I used a repository with no reasoning enabled, I would have to explicitly use a property path to find patients who are taking any nitrate esters, with a snippet like this (right?)

?s rdfs:subClassOf* <http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/CHEBI_51080> .

What about inferring the classes to which individuals belong to?

What if my ontology says something like

:ViagraPill owl:equivalentClass ( :pill 
    and (:hasColor some :blue ) 
    and (:hasShape some :diamond))
:steelBlue rdfs:subClassOf :blue

And I have data triples that say something like

:patient1 :consumed :pill1 .
:pill1 :hasColor :steelBlue1 ;
    :hasShape :diamond1 .
:steelBlue1 a :steelBlue .
:diamond1 a :diamond.

And I want to write a query for patients who have consumed Viagra pills:

?patient a :patient ;
    :consumed ?pill .
?pill a :ViagraPill .

I would need some form of OWL reasoning for that, right?

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46916049/do-i-really-need-owl-reasoning