SPARQL: restricting DESCRIBE queries

• From: Bernhard Schandl <bernhard.schandl@univie.ac.at>
• Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 16:36:29 +0200
• To: dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net, public-lod@w3.org
• Message-Id: <76D323DF-9E87-4B11-BC94-85018E18C9E3@univie.ac.at>

Hi,

is there any way to limit the number of triples returned by a DESCRIBE  
query? The LIMIT clause of sparql obviously applies to the number of  
result bindings, but each result binding may lead to an arbitrary  
number of triples.

Consider the following queries against dbpedia:

SELECT ?concept WHERE { ?concept rdfs:label "Berlin"@en . } LIMIT 1

returns one result, whereas

SELECT ?concept WHERE { ?concept rdfs:label "Berlin"@en . } LIMIT 2

returns two results. Now,

DESCRIBE ?concept WHERE { ?concept rdfs:label "Berlin"@en . } LIMIT 1

returns 28 triples describing dbpedia:Category:Berlin, while

DESCRIBE ?concept WHERE { ?concept rdfs:label "Berlin"@en . } LIMIT 2

returns some ~4500 triples because it includes the description of  
dbpedia:Berlin.

Any suggestions how I could limit the number of triples returned by  
such a query?

Best, Bernhard

Received on Monday, 7 September 2009 14:39:42 UTC