Re: minor technical on 10.2 Selecting variables

> 10.2 Selecting variables
> If SELECT * is used, what is order of the variables in the result?
> Perhaps the answer is that it is irrelevant because results are
> necessarily returned with the names of the variables.

They aren't "results", as such -- they're bindings. Bindings are  
indeed necessarily associated with variable names.

> This is certainly
> true of the XML format for returning results.  However, this format is
> not mandated.  If you do not care to specify the order of variables in
> SELECT *, then you should specify that results must be presented in a
> format that identifies the variable names.

The format should decide on the ordering of variables in the results.  
It's quite likely that most results formats would want to identify  
variable names, but maybe not all -- "SPARQL as art", perhaps?

-R 

Received on Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:19:35 UTC