Estimating the Cardinality of Conjunctive Queries over RDF Data Using Graph Summarisation
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Estimating the cardinality (i.e., the number of answers) of conjunctive queries is extensively used in data management systems. This problem is particularly difficult in RDF systems since queries over RDF data are navigational and thus tend to involve many joins. In this paper we present a new technique for estimating the cardinality of conjunctive queries in RDF. We use a summary of an RDF graph as a synopsis that we interpret using a possible world semantics. We formalise the estimation problem as computing the expectation of query cardinality over all RDF graphs represented by the summary, and we present a closed-form formula for computing the expectation of arbitrary queries. We also discuss approaches to RDF graph summarisation. Finally, we show empirically that our cardinality technique is more accurate and more consistent, often by orders of magnitude, than several state-of-the-art approaches.
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