Re: SPARQL 1.1 Update

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Richard Newman <rnewman@twinql.com> wrote:
> Just a brief additional note:
>
>>>> * There doesn't seem to be any mention at all of responses in the draft.
>>>> Is
>>>> that intentional?
>>>
>>> I believe so. That's a job for the protocol, right?
>>
>> Yes but it is worth noting that no operations have any results other than
>> success/failure (unlike a query, say).
>
> While my question was for clarification, not an action, just today a
> customer asked "how can I find out how many triples were deleted by this API
> call?".
>
> Without saying either way that the spec should mandate a particular
> response, I think it's very likely that customers will ask for, and
> implementations will provide, a useful response to an Update request.

While I can definitely see the use here, I'd push very hard to make
responses like this OPTIONAL. It would be a cost on our system, though
I can't comment on others.

If someone really needed to know how many triples are affected, then a
COUNT ought to be useful. Unfortunately, this won't help much with
INSERT DATA and DELETE DATA unless you're prepared to use a temporary
graph to test for the difference before inserting.

Regards,
Paul