Wikidata Constraints on MARS (Extended Technical Report)

TL;DR

This paper presents a logical framework based on MARS for accurately representing and handling Wikidata constraints, improving expressiveness and providing a solid foundation for constraint checking.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive logical framework that fully characterizes Wikidata's property constraints and extends to non-property constraints, enhancing precision and consistency.

Findings

Nearly all Wikidata property constraints are fully characterized in the framework.

The framework can handle several proposed and non-property constraints.

Provides a natural and economical way to specify and check constraints.

Abstract

Wikidata constraints, albeit useful, are represented and processed in an incomplete, ad hoc fashion. Constraint declarations do not fully express their meaning, and thus do not provide a precise, unambiguous basis for constraint specification, or a logical foundation for constraint-checking implementations. In prior work we have proposed a logical framework for Wikidata as a whole, based on multi-attributed relational structures (MARS) and related logical languages. In this paper we explain how constraints are handled in the proposed framework, and show that nearly all of Wikidata's existing property constraints can be completely characterized in it, in a natural and economical fashion. We also give characterizations for several proposed property constraints, and show that a variety of non-property constraints can be handled in the same framework.