Ontology-Based Visual Query Formulation: An Industry Experience.

Querying is an essential instrument for meeting ad hoc information needs; however, current approaches for querying semantic data sources mostly target technologically versed users. Hence, there is a need for methods that make it possible for users with limited technological skills to express relatively complex ad hoc information needs in an easy and intuitive way. Visual methods for query formulation undertake the challenge of making querying independent of users' technical skills and the knowledge of the underlying textual query language and the structure of data. In this paper, we present an ontology-based visual query system, OptiqueVQS, and report user experiments in two industrial settings.