Re: Blank Nodes and SPARQL

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 05:38:56PM -0500, Dan Connolly wrote:
> 
> Ron writes...
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2005Jun/0045.html
> > There is a difference between extending the protocol in a compatible
> > way, and extending it in a conflicting manner.
> 
> yeah... I'm trying to figure out which you're asking for. I wonder
> if a test case clarifies.
> 
> I gather the relevant text is...
> 
> [[
> Blank nodes in queries are distinct from all blank nodes in the data. A
> blank node in a graph pattern does not match a blank node in the data by blank
> node label. A blank node in a query pattern may match any RDF term.
> ]]
>  -- 2.7 Blank Nodes
>  http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/rq23/#BlankNodes
> 
> cwm has a mode where it makes up blank nodes based on line/column
> numbers so you can see where they came from and so they're repeatable.
> So we might have data a la...
> 
>  _:l23c14 foaf:mbox <mailto:connolly@w3.org>.
> 
> and we might make a query like...
> 
>  SELECT ?MBOX
>   WHERE { _:l23c14 foaf:mbox ?MBOX. }.
> 
> Now in fact, the bnode in the query *does* match the bnode
> in the data in that case. So it's pretty clear that
> 
>  "A blank node in a graph pattern does not match a blank node in the
>  data by blank node label."
> 
> is misleading. In fact, I think
> 
>  "A blank node in a query pattern may match any RDF term."
> 
> should just be
> 
>  "A blank node in a query pattern matches every RDF term."
> 
> but every is sorta confusing in a way... so maybe
> 
>   "In a query pattern, a blank node is parsed as a variable
>   that is distinct from all other variables in the query."
> 
> so that in the abstract form, query patterns never
> have bnodes at all. Andy, how does that strike you?
> 
> 
> Meanwhile, if you really mean to use bnodes in
> some session context, I'm not sure you can do that
> in a compatible way. If you use different bnode
> identifiers, they still have to match. i.e.
> 
>  SELECT ?MBOX
>   WHERE { _:l55c33 foaf:mbox ?MBOX. }.
> 
> still has (?MBOX, <mailto:connolly@w3.org>) as a solution,
> even thought the bnode identifiers are different.
> Any piece of software that says that's not a solution
> is not implementing the semantics of SPARQL.

To figure this out, I'd like to see a use case where you extend SPARQL
to use session-persistent bNodes. Then I'd like to see if a client
that doesn't know of this extension will get different answers than it
expects.
-- 
-eric

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