Re: ISSUE-105: Prefixes in SPARQL fragments

These oslc:prefix and oslc:prefixBase properties are used in parsing OSLC 
Queries. See http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OSLCCoreSpecQuery. 
These prefix definitions are defined in a ServiceProvider resource that 
provides the OSLC query capability. These are a convenience to provide a 
set of pre-defined prefixes by the service provider so that query authors 
don't have to specify them in every oslc.prefix query parameter (which is 
not part of the graph pattern) in the query expression.



Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
OSLC and Linked Lifecycle Data
919-525-6575




From:   Dimitris Kontokostas <kontokostas@informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
To:     Miika Alonen <miika.alonen@csc.fi>
Cc:     public-data-shapes-wg <public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org>
Date:   05/06/2016 04:26 AM
Subject:        Re: ISSUE-105: Prefixes in SPARQL fragments



Using Milka's link I noticed that IBM Shapes (OSLC) have a prefix 
declaration mechanism
http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OslcCoreSpecification#Resource_Prefix_Definition

Jim, can you tell us what is the use for this since IBM Shapes does not 
use SPARQL ?

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Miika Alonen <miika.alonen@csc.fi> wrote:
+1 for defining sh:prefix and sh:namespace

Its about time to standardize this: 
http://lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov/terms?q=prefix 

(wow, never even heard about https://www.w3.org/ns/rdfa#prefix)

Its also one of the suggested requirements from RDF Application profiles: 
http://wiki.dublincore.org/index.php/RDF_Application_Profiles/Requirements#R-220_Define_used_vocabulary

The use case for the application profiles is also that there is standard 
way to add descriptions about the used vocabularies. Not all of the used 
vocabularies are resolvable and some are still "hidden" in chargeable 
(ISO/CEN, etc) standards. 

I think that the whole point of this is to minimize confusion and make it 
possible to declare preferred prefixes, used namespaces and document the 
intended use of the vocabularies. 

Best Regards,
Miika Alonen

CSC - IT Center for Science
miika.alonen@csc.fi


From: "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com>
To: "public-data-shapes-wg" <public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, 5 May, 2016 06:15:14
Subject: Re: ISSUE-105: Prefixes in SPARQL fragments

Just to give further input of why SHACL should include something like 
sh:prefix.

I collected some statistics about stored SPARQL queries in our product. 
These queries are not only constraints, but most of them are part of user 
interface code (SPARQL Web Pages). We have 899 SELECT queries, 240 MODIFY, 
173 ASK and 43 CONSTRUCT queries. We have 741 SPIN functions, 101 magic 
properties. And we have thousands (!) of small SPARQL snippets 
(stand-alone FILTER/BIND expressions) in IF/LET statements that drive the 
UI. It would be nice to migrate to SHACL syntax in the future, but having 
to repeat all used prefix declarations thousands of times will lead to 
excessive bloat. Note that these statistics only include the standard UI 
modules in our product - we have many more cases (such as SPIN rules and 
SPARQLMotion scripts) in custom consulting projects and customer 
deployments.

I acknowledge that all points raised by others here (such as difficulty of 
copy and paste, potential confusion with duplicate prefixes and the extra 
overhead of managing sh:prefix triples) are valid. But these points do 
need to be weighed against the cost that also will be there if we don't 
provide anything.

My strong preference remains to support simple ?namespace sh:prefix 
?prefix triples. This is a predicate that would have been useful to 
standardize a long time ago, for use cases that go beyond SHACL. For 
example it is a perfectly valid scenario that people upload and edit 
resources to a database (that may not manage prefixes) yet want to track 
how these will look like when serialized back to files. It is also a 
common requirement to query the prefix in SPARQL, e.g. to build display 
strings or abbreviations.

In SPIN we did not have this issue because SPIN uses an RDF data model to 
represent queries. This avoids the prefix question because proper 
references to URIs are used, but has the drawbacks that it leads to almost 
unmaintainable Turtle files and that the verbatim syntax as entered by the 
user is lost (e.g. indentation, line breaks formatting and # comments). 
For people who are using SPARQL heavily (such as in TQ's products), these 
aspects are very important.

Holger



On 24/04/2016 17:41, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
On Apr 24, 2016 7:15 AM, "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com> 
wrote:
>
> That's an interesting thought, Peter. We could extend and generalize 
this further, basically eliminating the problem of possible prefix 
conflicts: Each sh:sparql triple is already wrapped into an object (such 
as sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver, sh:SPARQLSelectValidator, subclasses of 
sh:SPARQLExecutable) in the current draft. These wrapper objects could all 
have another property sh:prefixes, making it explicit which prefixes are 
to be used:
>
> sh:DefaultPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "rdf" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "owl" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     ...
>
> ex:MyPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:extends sh:DefaultPrefixes ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "ex" ;  sh:namespace "http://example.com/ns#" 
] .
>
> and then
>
>
> ex:MyShape
>     a sh:Shape ;
>     sh:property [
>         sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>         sh:derivedValues [
>             a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>             sh:prefixes ex:MyPrefixes ;
>
>             sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>         ]
>     ] .
>
> Very chatty syntax, but hopefully closer to acceptable to those who are 
currently against the whole idea.
This doesn't address Mark's comment about cut/pastability but very nicely 
reduces the uncertainty associated with default prefixes.
> Holger
>
>
> On 23/04/2016 22:52, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>>
>> Another possible approach would be to have a property on these 
constructs that
>> provided prefixes for the construct only, as in
>>
>> ex:MyShape
>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>      sh:property [
>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>              sh:prefixHere ( "ex" "http://example.com" ) ;
>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>          ]
>>      ] .
>>
>> On 04/22/2016 04:35 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:
>>>
>>> I just thought about another problem with prefixes. Currently we have 
one
>>> construct in the spec that operates on SPARQL fragments:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:property [
>>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>>          ]
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without something like sh:prefix, people would need to always spell 
out the
>>> full URIs, because they cannot create PREFIX declarations in a SPARQL
>>> fragment. We already do have other use cases of such fragments in our 
tool
>>> suite (for expressions that constraint the applicability of menu items 
etc),
>>> and it is quite plausible that the WG may want to adopt the following 
syntax
>>> for path-based constraints in the future:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:constraint [
>>>          a sh:PathConstraint ;
>>>          sh:path "ex:parent/ex:parent" ;
>>>          sh:minCount 2 ;
>>>          sh:maxCount 4 ;
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without sh:prefix we would essentially rule out these syntactic 
choices,
>>> unless we can get users enthusiastic about always using full URIs.
>>>
>>> As always, there are work-arounds, e.g. we could force everything to 
be SELECT
>>> or ASK queries. But at some stage I find the pain points are really 
becoming
>>> too big.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Holger
>>>
>>>
>
>



Best Regards,
Miika Alonen

CSC - IT Center for Science
miika.alonen@csc.fi


From: "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com>
To: "public-data-shapes-wg" <public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, 5 May, 2016 06:15:14
Subject: Re: ISSUE-105: Prefixes in SPARQL fragments

Just to give further input of why SHACL should include something like 
sh:prefix.

I collected some statistics about stored SPARQL queries in our product. 
These queries are not only constraints, but most of them are part of user 
interface code (SPARQL Web Pages). We have 899 SELECT queries, 240 MODIFY, 
173 ASK and 43 CONSTRUCT queries. We have 741 SPIN functions, 101 magic 
properties. And we have thousands (!) of small SPARQL snippets 
(stand-alone FILTER/BIND expressions) in IF/LET statements that drive the 
UI. It would be nice to migrate to SHACL syntax in the future, but having 
to repeat all used prefix declarations thousands of times will lead to 
excessive bloat. Note that these statistics only include the standard UI 
modules in our product - we have many more cases (such as SPIN rules and 
SPARQLMotion scripts) in custom consulting projects and customer 
deployments.

I acknowledge that all points raised by others here (such as difficulty of 
copy and paste, potential confusion with duplicate prefixes and the extra 
overhead of managing sh:prefix triples) are valid. But these points do 
need to be weighed against the cost that also will be there if we don't 
provide anything.

My strong preference remains to support simple ?namespace sh:prefix 
?prefix triples. This is a predicate that would have been useful to 
standardize a long time ago, for use cases that go beyond SHACL. For 
example it is a perfectly valid scenario that people upload and edit 
resources to a database (that may not manage prefixes) yet want to track 
how these will look like when serialized back to files. It is also a 
common requirement to query the prefix in SPARQL, e.g. to build display 
strings or abbreviations.

In SPIN we did not have this issue because SPIN uses an RDF data model to 
represent queries. This avoids the prefix question because proper 
references to URIs are used, but has the drawbacks that it leads to almost 
unmaintainable Turtle files and that the verbatim syntax as entered by the 
user is lost (e.g. indentation, line breaks formatting and # comments). 
For people who are using SPARQL heavily (such as in TQ's products), these 
aspects are very important.

Holger



On 24/04/2016 17:41, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
On Apr 24, 2016 7:15 AM, "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com> 
wrote:
>
> That's an interesting thought, Peter. We could extend and generalize 
this further, basically eliminating the problem of possible prefix 
conflicts: Each sh:sparql triple is already wrapped into an object (such 
as sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver, sh:SPARQLSelectValidator, subclasses of 
sh:SPARQLExecutable) in the current draft. These wrapper objects could all 
have another property sh:prefixes, making it explicit which prefixes are 
to be used:
>
> sh:DefaultPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "rdf" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "owl" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     ...
>
> ex:MyPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:extends sh:DefaultPrefixes ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "ex" ;  sh:namespace "http://example.com/ns#" 
] .
>
> and then
>
>
> ex:MyShape
>     a sh:Shape ;
>     sh:property [
>         sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>         sh:derivedValues [
>             a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>             sh:prefixes ex:MyPrefixes ;
>
>             sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>         ]
>     ] .
>
> Very chatty syntax, but hopefully closer to acceptable to those who are 
currently against the whole idea.
This doesn't address Mark's comment about cut/pastability but very nicely 
reduces the uncertainty associated with default prefixes.
> Holger
>
>
> On 23/04/2016 22:52, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>>
>> Another possible approach would be to have a property on these 
constructs that
>> provided prefixes for the construct only, as in
>>
>> ex:MyShape
>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>      sh:property [
>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>              sh:prefixHere ( "ex" "http://example.com" ) ;
>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>          ]
>>      ] .
>>
>> On 04/22/2016 04:35 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:
>>>
>>> I just thought about another problem with prefixes. Currently we have 
one
>>> construct in the spec that operates on SPARQL fragments:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:property [
>>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>>          ]
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without something like sh:prefix, people would need to always spell 
out the
>>> full URIs, because they cannot create PREFIX declarations in a SPARQL
>>> fragment. We already do have other use cases of such fragments in our 
tool
>>> suite (for expressions that constraint the applicability of menu items 
etc),
>>> and it is quite plausible that the WG may want to adopt the following 
syntax
>>> for path-based constraints in the future:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:constraint [
>>>          a sh:PathConstraint ;
>>>          sh:path "ex:parent/ex:parent" ;
>>>          sh:minCount 2 ;
>>>          sh:maxCount 4 ;
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without sh:prefix we would essentially rule out these syntactic 
choices,
>>> unless we can get users enthusiastic about always using full URIs.
>>>
>>> As always, there are work-arounds, e.g. we could force everything to 
be SELECT
>>> or ASK queries. But at some stage I find the pain points are really 
becoming
>>> too big.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Holger
>>>
>>>
>
>



Best Regards,
Miika Alonen

CSC - IT Center for Science
miika.alonen@csc.fi


From: "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com>
To: "public-data-shapes-wg" <public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, 5 May, 2016 06:15:14
Subject: Re: ISSUE-105: Prefixes in SPARQL fragments

Just to give further input of why SHACL should include something like 
sh:prefix.

I collected some statistics about stored SPARQL queries in our product. 
These queries are not only constraints, but most of them are part of user 
interface code (SPARQL Web Pages). We have 899 SELECT queries, 240 MODIFY, 
173 ASK and 43 CONSTRUCT queries. We have 741 SPIN functions, 101 magic 
properties. And we have thousands (!) of small SPARQL snippets 
(stand-alone FILTER/BIND expressions) in IF/LET statements that drive the 
UI. It would be nice to migrate to SHACL syntax in the future, but having 
to repeat all used prefix declarations thousands of times will lead to 
excessive bloat. Note that these statistics only include the standard UI 
modules in our product - we have many more cases (such as SPIN rules and 
SPARQLMotion scripts) in custom consulting projects and customer 
deployments.

I acknowledge that all points raised by others here (such as difficulty of 
copy and paste, potential confusion with duplicate prefixes and the extra 
overhead of managing sh:prefix triples) are valid. But these points do 
need to be weighed against the cost that also will be there if we don't 
provide anything.

My strong preference remains to support simple ?namespace sh:prefix 
?prefix triples. This is a predicate that would have been useful to 
standardize a long time ago, for use cases that go beyond SHACL. For 
example it is a perfectly valid scenario that people upload and edit 
resources to a database (that may not manage prefixes) yet want to track 
how these will look like when serialized back to files. It is also a 
common requirement to query the prefix in SPARQL, e.g. to build display 
strings or abbreviations.

In SPIN we did not have this issue because SPIN uses an RDF data model to 
represent queries. This avoids the prefix question because proper 
references to URIs are used, but has the drawbacks that it leads to almost 
unmaintainable Turtle files and that the verbatim syntax as entered by the 
user is lost (e.g. indentation, line breaks formatting and # comments). 
For people who are using SPARQL heavily (such as in TQ's products), these 
aspects are very important.

Holger



On 24/04/2016 17:41, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
On Apr 24, 2016 7:15 AM, "Holger Knublauch" <holger@topquadrant.com> 
wrote:
>
> That's an interesting thought, Peter. We could extend and generalize 
this further, basically eliminating the problem of possible prefix 
conflicts: Each sh:sparql triple is already wrapped into an object (such 
as sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver, sh:SPARQLSelectValidator, subclasses of 
sh:SPARQLExecutable) in the current draft. These wrapper objects could all 
have another property sh:prefixes, making it explicit which prefixes are 
to be used:
>
> sh:DefaultPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "rdf" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "owl" ; sh:namespace "http://..." ] ;
>     ...
>
> ex:MyPrefixes
>     a sh:PrefixDeclaration ;
>     sh:extends sh:DefaultPrefixes ;
>     sh:prefix [ sh:prefix "ex" ;  sh:namespace "http://example.com/ns#" 
] .
>
> and then
>
>
> ex:MyShape
>     a sh:Shape ;
>     sh:property [
>         sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>         sh:derivedValues [
>             a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>             sh:prefixes ex:MyPrefixes ;
>
>             sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>         ]
>     ] .
>
> Very chatty syntax, but hopefully closer to acceptable to those who are 
currently against the whole idea.
This doesn't address Mark's comment about cut/pastability but very nicely 
reduces the uncertainty associated with default prefixes.
> Holger
>
>
> On 23/04/2016 22:52, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>>
>> Another possible approach would be to have a property on these 
constructs that
>> provided prefixes for the construct only, as in
>>
>> ex:MyShape
>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>      sh:property [
>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>              sh:prefixHere ( "ex" "http://example.com" ) ;
>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>          ]
>>      ] .
>>
>> On 04/22/2016 04:35 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:
>>>
>>> I just thought about another problem with prefixes. Currently we have 
one
>>> construct in the spec that operates on SPARQL fragments:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:property [
>>>          sh:predicate ex:grandParent ;
>>>          sh:derivedValues [
>>>              a sh:SPARQLValuesDeriver ;
>>>              sh:sparql "$this ex:parent/ex:parent ?value" ;
>>>          ]
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without something like sh:prefix, people would need to always spell 
out the
>>> full URIs, because they cannot create PREFIX declarations in a SPARQL
>>> fragment. We already do have other use cases of such fragments in our 
tool
>>> suite (for expressions that constraint the applicability of menu items 
etc),
>>> and it is quite plausible that the WG may want to adopt the following 
syntax
>>> for path-based constraints in the future:
>>>
>>> ex:MyShape
>>>      a sh:Shape ;
>>>      sh:constraint [
>>>          a sh:PathConstraint ;
>>>          sh:path "ex:parent/ex:parent" ;
>>>          sh:minCount 2 ;
>>>          sh:maxCount 4 ;
>>>      ] .
>>>
>>> Without sh:prefix we would essentially rule out these syntactic 
choices,
>>> unless we can get users enthusiastic about always using full URIs.
>>>
>>> As always, there are work-arounds, e.g. we could force everything to 
be SELECT
>>> or ASK queries. But at some stage I find the pain points are really 
becoming
>>> too big.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Holger
>>>
>>>
>
>




-- 
Dimitris Kontokostas
Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig & DBpedia 
Association
Projects: http://dbpedia.org, http://rdfunit.aksw.org, http://
http://aligned-project.eu
Homepage:http://aksw.org/DimitrisKontokostas
Research Group: AKSW/KILT http://aksw.org/Groups/KILT

Received on Friday, 6 May 2016 13:01:36 UTC