Re: Restpark - Minimal RESTful API for querying RDF triples

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Paul,
>
> That is exactly what my point was entirely about. Many service don't expose
> their SQL interface, so why should Linked Data?
>
> Regarding this Linked Data API, it seems to still require a SPARQL endpoint.
> In fact it states that it is a proxy for SPARQL. Would it simply be possible
> to implement this API without SPARQL on top of a regular database that
> contains triples?

While the specification talks about mapping to a SPARQL endpoint the
processing model would potentially allow you to use different
backends. Servicing a Linked Data API request involves several steps:

1. Mapping the request to a query (currently a SPARQL SELECT) to
identify the list of resources of interest
2. Mapping the request to a query (currently a SPARQL CONSTRUCT) to
produce a description of each item on the list
3. Serialising the results

Broadly speaking you could swap out steps 1 & 2.

For example you could map the first step to a search query that
produces a list of results from a search engine, or a SQL query that
extracts the resources from a database. You could map the second step
to requests to a document database that fetches pre-existing
descriptions of each item.

The API supports a number of filtering and sorting options, which will
add some complexity to both stages, but I don't think there's any show
stoppers in there.

Cheers,

L.

--
Leigh Dodds
Freelance Technologist
Open Data, Linked Data Geek
t: @ldodds
w: ldodds.com
e: leigh@ldodds.com

Received on Thursday, 18 April 2013 11:10:38 UTC