Difference Views for Visual Graph Query Building

TL;DR

This paper introduces a visual graph query system that uses graph differences and natural language interfaces to support iterative, explorative querying of knowledge graphs, enhancing user understanding and data exploration.

Contribution

The system uniquely visualizes query evolution through graph differences and integrates natural language input for dynamic, iterative query formulation.

Findings

Effective visualization of query changes enhances user understanding.

Supports natural language input for flexible query updates.

Demonstrated applicability across various ontologies and scenarios.

Abstract

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) contain vast amounts of linked resources that encode knowledge in various domains, which can be queried and searched for using specialized languages like SPARQL, a query language developed to query KGs. Existing visual query builders enable non-expert users to construct SPARQL queries and utilize the knowledge contained in these graphs. Query building is, however, an iterative and, often, visual process where the question of the user can change and differ throughout the process, especially for explorative search. Our visual querying interface communicates these change between iterative steps in the query building process using graph differences to contrast the changes and the evolution in the graph query. We also enable users to formulate their evolving information needs using a natural language interface directly integrated into the difference query view. We, furthermore, communicate the change in results in the result view by contrasting the differences in both result distribution and individual instances of the prototype graph and demonstrate the system's applicability through case studies on different ontologies and usage scenarios, illustrating how our system fosters, both, data exploration and analysis of domain-specific graphs.