Re: Concerning LET or AS

Dear WG,

many thanks for including BIND, which is a good syntax. We believe this feature is crucial for transformation tasks and using SPARQL as a rule language, without having to write deeply nested and complicating sub-SELECTs.

TopQuadrant is satisfied with the WG response.

Thank you
Holger


On Apr 7, 2011, at 1:28 AM, Lee Feigenbaum wrote:

> Hi Jeremy,
> 
> We appreciate your patience in waiting for an official response from the SPARQL Working Group on this issue.
> 
> The SPARQL WG resolved to include the "assignment" feature n SPARQL 1.1 with the syntax:
> 
>  BIND(expr AS ?var)
> 
> ...and closed the associated issue (http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/track/issues/57) in October. The current editors' draft reflects the resolution of this issue:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/docs/query-1.1/rq25.xml#assignment
> 
> We would be grateful if you would acknowledge that your comment has been answered by sending a reply to this mailing list.
> 
> Lee
> On behalf of the SPARQL working group
> 
> On 11/3/2009 2:30 AM, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
>> Thank you for your time and attention at the WG meeting today.
>> 
>> TopQuadrant would like Holger's earlier comment [1] to be treated as a
>> formal comment. (i.e. with an official WG response on this mailing list).
>> 
>> My understanding from today's meeting is that that is likely to be that
>> the WG has already considered the LET design and believes the AS design
>> to be adequate.
>> (LET is merely an abbreviated form for certain AS constructs). I also do
>> not believe that TopQuadrant is bringing any new information that was
>> not considered at your f2f meeting [2].
>> 
>> We however feel strongly about this, and are likely to raise a formal
>> objection (in the sense that we believe it would be better for the WG to
>> take a few weeks longer over SPARQL 1.1 and get this right, than to
>> deliver SPARQL 1.1 on schedule without this feature).
>> 
>> Thinking through particularly Steve's comments, I tried to come up with
>> an example illustrating how the ordering of operations that is sometimes
>> required is better articulated with LET than with AS.
>> This example is not as polished as I would like, since I believe it is
>> more helpful to contribute during your F2F meeting.
>> 
>> First I wish to clarify that this is not about whether or not assignment
>> should be in SPARQL 1.1. Assignment is in already, with the AS construct
>> that was discussed under item 39. This issue is purely about the syntax
>> and scoping rules for the single assignment capability.
>> 
>> Many of the sort of processing tasks that we and are customers have
>> involve mapping several legacy sources together, merging them into one
>> RDF graph, and then doing some processing.
>> A frequent problem is that different legacy sources represent the same
>> data in different ways, e.g. with different case conventions, in
>> different units, or whatever. In these cases, data laundry of one sort
>> or another is necessary. One option for laundry is using functions and
>> assignment within SPARQL.
>> 
>> So for my example, I am taking information about alumni at a college and
>> trying to find the appropriate year photo for them.
>> I will simplify the name problem to a name consist of a first name and a
>> last name, (no middle initial), but people change their last name from
>> time to time.
>> 
>> The data sources that I have include:
>> - a current mailing database, with full-names, e-mail addresses, and
>> addresses
>> a:fullName a:email a:address
>> _:w a:fullName "John Smith" .
>> _:w a:email <mailto:john.smith@example.org>.
>> 
>> - a database with students first names and last names and former last names
>> to simplify processing I just use two properties
>> b:firstName
>> b:lastName
>> 
>> for example:
>> _:x b:firstName "John" .
>> _:x b:lastName "Doe" .
>> _:x b:lastName "Smith".
>> 
>> shows that the person known as John Doe and the person known as John
>> Smith are one and the same, without clarifying the chronology of the
>> name change.
>> 
>> - a database with date of matriculation, and years of study, by full
>> name at time of matriculation
>> c:matriculationDate c:studyYears c:fullName _:y c:fullName "John Doe" .
>> _:y c:studyYears "P1Y"^^xs:yearMonthDuration .
>> _:y c:matriculationDate "1988-09-01"^^xsd:date.
>> - and a list of graduation photo names by year.
>> d:year d:fileName
>> _:z d:year "1988"^^xsd:date
>> _:z d:fileName "classOf88"
>> 
>> - I have arranged these photos as jpg files on the web at
>> http://www.example.org/photos
>> http://www.example.org/photos/classOf88.jpg
>> 
>> 
>> SELECT ?eMail ?image
>> WHERE { ?a a:email ?eMail .
>> ?a e:fullName ?fullName
>> LET ( ?fullNameSpaceNormalized=normalize-space(?fullName) ) [A] LET (
>> ?firstName=substring-before(?fullNameSpaceNormalized," ") [B]
>> ?lastName=substring-after(?fullNameSpaceNormalized," ") )
>> ?b b:firstName ?firstName .
>> ?b b:lastName ?lastName .
>> ?b b:lastName ?altLastName . [C]
>> LET ( ?altName=concat(?firstName, " ", ?altLastName ) ) ?c c:fullName
>> ?a;tName .
>> ?c c:studyYears ?lengthOfCourse .
>> ?c c:matriculationDate ?matriculate .
>> LET
>> (?endDate=|year-from-date(add-yearMonthDuration-to-date(?matriculate,?lengthOfCourse))
>> )
>> ?d d:year ?endDate .
>> ?d d:fileName ?imageFile .
>> LET ( ?image = xs:anyURI(concat("http://www.example.org/photos",
>> ?imageFile, ".jpg" ) ) )|
>> }
>> 
>> Notes:
>> [A] for robustness against leading/trailing space and/or double space in
>> the middle
>> [B] cannot be combined with [A] because of rules discussed under issue 39
>> [C] ?altLastName can be the same as ?lastName
>> 
>> I believe the WG is considering recommending that this query should be
>> written as follows.
>> 
>> SELECT ?eMail,
>> xs:anyURI(concat("http://www.example.org/photos", ?imageFile, ".jpg" ) )
>> as ?image
>> WHERE {
>> SELECT ( *
>> year-from-date(add-yearMonthDuration-to-date(?matriculate,?lengthOfCourse))
>> AS ?endDate )
>> WHERE {
>> SELECT ( * concat(?firstName, " ", ?altLastName ) AS ?altName ) WHERE {
>> SELECT (* substring-before(?fullNameSpaceNormalized," ") AS ?firstName,
>> substring-after(?fullNameSpaceNormalized," ") AS ?lastName )
>> WHERE {
>> SELECT (* normalize-space(?fullName) as ?fullNameSpaceNormalized)
>> WHERE {
>> ?a a:email ?eMail .
>> ?a e:fullName ?fullName .
>> }
>> } ?b b:firstName ?firstName .
>> ?b b:lastName ?lastName .
>> ?b b:lastName ?altLastName .
>> }
>> ?c c:fullName ?a;tName .
>> ?c c:studyYears ?lengthOfCourse .
>> ?c c:matriculationDate ?matriculate .
>> }
>> ?d d:year ?endDate .
>> ?d d:fileName ?imageFile .
>> }
>> 
>> (Using the equivalence from [3])
>> We believe that this is inferior.
>> Harder to write, harder to read, harder to understand, and that the cost
>> of complicating the language by having two ways to say the same thing is
>> well worth it.
>> 
>> 
>> Jeremy Carroll
>> AC Rep, TopQuadrant.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2009Oct/0003
>> [2]
>> http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/meeting/2009-05-06#ProjectExpressions___26___20_Assignment
>> 
>> [3]
>> http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/wiki/Feature:Assignment#Equivalence_with_SubSelects_and_ProjectExpressions
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 6 April 2011 22:51:08 UTC