Derived types in semantic association discovery

Semantic associations are direct or indirect linkages between two entities that are construed from existing associations among entities. In this paper we extend our previous query language approach for discovering semantic associations with an ability to retrieve semantic associations that, besides explicitly stated (base) associations, may contain associations derived using logic-based derivation rules. As will be shown, this makes it possible to find semantic associations that are both compact and intuitive. To implement this new feature, we introduce a rewriting principle that utilizes derived associations to reduce resulting semantic associations if possible. Other proposed means to assist the interpretation of query results include answer expansion and the ordering of answers. The incorporated answer expansion feature lets the user investigate rewritten semantic associations in a query result at the desired level of detail. The ordering of answers is based on the lengths of the resulting semantic associations, whereby priority is given to shorter semantic associations which often express close and relevant relationships.