Query forms should be resources, not operations

Greetings,

AFAICT, the query forms in the query language are "operations", in the
"API" sense of the word, just as they are in query languages such as
SQL (well, "SELECT" anyhow).  They're listed as;

- SELECT
- CONSTRUCT
- DESCRIBE
- ASK

I have a concern about this, similar to my concern[1] about the SPARQL
protocol, in fact; I believe that the HTTP operations, in particular GET
and POST, should suffice.

What this means to SPARQL, I think, is that the separate functionality
provided by those operations above should be recast as separate
resources.  So instead of a single URI for a "SPARQL processor", you'd
have four URIs, each identifying a processor of a particular kind of
query.  I believe this is more inline with the TAG's recommendation to
identify resources;

  To benefit from and increase the value of the World Wide Web, agents
   should provide URIs as identifiers for resources.
  -- http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#pr-use-uris

Where this differs from the current approach is primarily in the use of
HTTP POST (since, for GET, both approaches would produce four URIs for
the same arguments with different operations).  Instead of POSTing a
SPARQL query that consists of an embedded operation, the query (without
the operation) would be POSTed to one of the aforementioned four query
processors.

Thanks.

 [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2005Jun/0041.html

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.          http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies   http://www.coactus.com

Received on Thursday, 28 July 2005 18:58:50 UTC