Suggestion: Support Linking from all Query Responses

Hi,

I'd like to make the following feature suggestion/raise an issue with the WG:

Feature: Support contextual links from all query responses

Feature Description

  The SPARQL XML Results format currently supports a <link/> element
allowing references to
  additional metadata to be included in the response. However this
feature is limited as there is
  no way for a client to select between the possible alternatives. A
"rel" attribute similar to HTTP
  would be one way to enable this, as would allowing additional
elements from extra namespaces
  to be included in the response.

  A typical example of using this feature would be to link back to the
original endpoint, or to licensing metadata
  associated with the request.

  However currently this feature has no equivalent for
CONSTRUCT/DESCRIBE queries. It is potentially
  legal for an endpoint to include additional statements that refer to
the response document, but it is more likely
  that clients will simply treat these statements as part of the
results, rather than separate metadata about
  the result document.

Example:

 Allow, e.g.:

 <link rel="license" href="..."/>

 and/or

 <rdf:Description rdf:about="...">
  ...statements about response document...
 </rdf:Description>

 ... query results ...

Example Implementations

 None that I'm aware of.

Use Cases

* Make the protocol more RESTful by allowing hypertext linking, from
all result formats
* Allow linking to, or embedding of license statements relating to the
data in the results
* Allow linking to a service description for the endpoint and/or VoiD
description of the dataset

Cheers,

L.

-- 
Leigh Dodds
Programme Manager, Talis Platform
Talis
leigh.dodds@talis.com
http://www.talis.com

Received on Friday, 6 March 2009 11:07:59 UTC