pith. sign in

arxiv: 2210.02534 · v3 · submitted 2022-10-05 · 💻 cs.DB

Time travel for knowledge graphs: live queries over RDF change histories

Arcangelo Massari , Silvio Peroni This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-24 11:04 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.DB
keywords querieslibrarylivetimeconcurrentqueryagnosticdata
0
0 comments X

The pith

The Time Agnostic Library enables live execution of all six temporal SPARQL query types on any SPARQL-compliant triplestore using the OpenCitations Data Model for provenance.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

Knowledge graphs store facts as triples that can change over time. The challenge is asking questions about past states or changes without stopping updates. Existing tools either require loading all history first (blocking live use) or support only some query types. The Time Agnostic Library works directly on any triplestore that speaks SPARQL. It uses the OpenCitations Data Model, which records who changed what and when using the Provenance Ontology. This lets the library answer questions like 'what was the value at time T' or 'what changed between T1 and T2' while the data keeps updating. Tests on the BEAR-B benchmark show that time and memory grow slower than the number of versions. It is slower than offline systems but faster than the closest live competitor and works without special triplestore features.

Core claim

The Time Agnostic Library supports version materialization, single-version and cross-version structured queries, delta materialization, and single-delta and cross-delta structured queries over multi-triple patterns, with sub-linear scaling in execution time and memory on the BEAR-B benchmark, and is faster than R43ples across all query types while allowing concurrent updates.

Load-bearing premise

The data is stored according to the OpenCitations Data Model using PROV-O and SPARQL UPDATE operations to record provenance, which is required for the library to reconstruct temporal information without additional indexing.

read the original abstract

Performing time-traversal queries on RDF datasets remains unsupported in the most extensive knowledge graphs. Existing solutions either require offline ingestion, which prevents concurrent querying and updating, or operate live but with limited query coverage or triplestore dependency. This article presents the Time Agnostic Library, a Python library for performing temporal SPARQL queries live on any SPARQL-compliant triplestore, supporting all six temporal retrieval needs identified in the literature and concurrent updates. The methodology builds on the OpenCitations Data Model (OCDM), which records provenance using the Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) and SPARQL UPDATE operations. The library supports version materialization, single-version and cross-version structured queries, delta materialization, and single-delta and cross-delta structured queries over multi-triple patterns. Evaluation on the BEAR-B benchmark shows sub-linear scaling in both execution time and memory consumption as the number of versions increases. While preprocessing-based systems such as OSTRICH achieve faster query times, they require offline ingestion and cannot handle concurrent data updates. Against R43ples, the closest live system in architecture, the Time Agnostic Library is faster across all query types.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claim rests on the assumption that provenance is recorded via OCDM and PROV-O with SPARQL UPDATEs; no free parameters or invented entities are introduced. The library itself is the contribution rather than new axioms.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Any SPARQL-compliant triplestore supports the necessary UPDATE operations and can be queried for provenance data recorded in PROV-O.
    Invoked to enable live operation without triplestore-specific extensions.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5731 in / 1319 out tokens · 21569 ms · 2026-05-24T11:04:33.629561+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. HERITRACE: a domain-agnostic framework for SHACL-driven RDF curation with provenance and change tracking

    cs.DL 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    HERITRACE is a domain-agnostic framework for SHACL-driven RDF curation with automatic provenance and change tracking.