Is Complex Query Answering Really Complex?

Authors: Cosimo Gregucci, Bo Xiong, Daniel Hernández, Lorenzo Loconte, Pasquale Minervini, Steffen Staab, Antonio Vergari

Project URL: https://openreview.net/forum?id=F8NTPAz5HH

Paper: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=F8NTPAz5HH

Code: https://github.com/april-tools/is-cqa-complex

Abstract: Complex query answering (CQA) on knowledge graphs (KGs) is gaining momentum as a challenging reasoning task. In this paper, we show that the current benchmarks for CQA might not be as complex as we think, as the way they are built distorts our perception of progress in this field. For example, we find that in these benchmarks most queries (up to 98% for some query types) can be reduced to simpler problems, e.g., link prediction, where only one link needs to be predicted. The performance of state-of-the-art CQA models drops significantly when such models are evaluated on queries that cannot be reduced to easier types. Thus, we propose a set of more challenging benchmarks, composed of queries that require models to reason over multiple hops and better reflect the construction of real-world KGs. In a systematic empirical investigation, the new benchmarks show that current methods leave much to be desired from current CQA methods.

@inproceedings{gregucci2025cqa, title={Is Complex Query Answering Really Complex?}, author={Gregucci, Cosimo and Xiong, Bo and Hernández, Daniel  and  Loconte, Lorenzo and Minervini, Pasquale and Staab, Steffen and Vergari, Antonio}, booktitle={ICML}, year={2025} }