Patent ID: 8620941

Claim:
A method of searching and visualizing an instance path, the method being performed by an instance path search and visualization apparatus, the method comprising: (a) receiving two or more keywords and a path search condition; (b) generating a pair of instances with respect to the keywords, respectively, and extracting a pair of classes corresponding to each of the pairs of instances from an ontology instance database, respectively; (c) obtaining an ontology schema path with respect to each of the pairs of classes from an ontology schema path database, respectively; (d) replacing start and end classes with corresponding first and second instances in each of the ontology schema paths and searching for an instance path corresponding to the path search condition from the instance paths connected between the first instance and the second instance, respectively; (e) outputting an instance path display screen on which the searched instance paths are displayed; and (f) if the path search condition is changed through the instance path display screen, obtaining and visualizing instance paths corresponding to the changed path search condition, wherein step (d) comprises: (d-1) replacing the start and end classes with corresponding first and second instances in the ontology schema path; (d-2) dividing the ontology schema path into halves and generating a first join schedule including the first instance and a second join schedule including the second instance; (d-3) extracting related instances based on the first and second join schedules and searching for first and second instance paths; (d-4) connecting the searched first and second instance paths depending on their relationship and generating instance paths; and (d-5) searching for an instance path corresponding to the path search condition from the generated instance paths, respectively.