Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, 2nd Edition

When does Inferencing Happen?

The RDFS and OWL standards define what inferences are valid, given certain patterns of triples. But when does inferencing happen? Is inferencing done at all? Where and how are inferred triples stored, if at all? How many of them are there?

These questions are properly outside the range of the definitions of RDFS and OWL, but they are clearly important for any implementation that conforms to these standards. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the answers to these questions can differ from one implementation to another. The simplest approach is to store all triples in a single store, regardless of whether they are asserted or inferred. As soon as a pattern is identified, any inferred triples are inserted ...