RE: Supplemental XQuery reading list

OK, I have a better idea of what you mean now. There is a standard mapping
in the sense there's the SQL/XML work I referenced earlier [1]. I'm not a
SQL person, so I don't feel I can speak very authoritatively on the
ramifications of doing that. At a minimum I guess you'd have to not mind
having to implement your RDF store in somebody's SQL db. (Does that parse?)
It's certainly not a general-purpose solution.

Howard

[1] http://www.acm.org/sigmod/record/issues/0206/standard.pdf

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-rdf-dawg-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-rdf-dawg-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Eric Prud'hommeaux
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 11:40 AM
> To: Howard Katz
> Cc: RDF Data Access Working Group
> Subject: Re: Supplemental XQuery reading list
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 07:54:06AM -0700, Howard Katz wrote:
> >
> >
> > > I can't speak to Andy's agenda, but one point that's been kicking
> > > around in the XQuery/RDF Query arena for a while is that XQuery can be
> > > used to express SQL queries so it must be able to express RDF
> > > queries.
> >
> > It can, if you're able to work out a mapping from the RDF data
> model into
> > the XQuery data model, which is basically the XML Infoset + XML Schema
> > support + support for multiple documents.
> >
> > I'm finding myself quite interested in the inverse problem: would it be
> > possible and useful to be able to map from the XQuery surface
> language into
> > an underlying RDF graph-based data model, so that XQuery syntax
> can be used
> > to interrogate an RDF data store more or less directly? In
> other words, can
> > we swap out XQuery's underlying XML-based data model and slide in an
> > RDF-based one in its place so that we don't have to do the
> mapping to XML?
> > I'll be talking about this after Amsterdam.
> >
> > > I've seen a couple approaches that I believe workable [1]
> > > [2], but would like to see how people solve the problem for SQL.
> >
> > I've given a few pointers in my response to Andy's email re SQL-to-XML
> > mappings for XQuery.
> >
> > > I suspect that in standardizing an RDF query language we are going
> > > beyond where existing SQL mappings to XQuery have gone in that we want
> > > *one* mapping to XQuery that operates on XQuery+whatever
> > > implementations from different vendors. Does such a "standard" mapping
> > > to SQL exist?
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by the last, Eric. Can you explain a
> bit more?
>
> Sure. One objection to using XQuery for querying RDF is that the data
> models are different. In my view, this doesn't preclude its utility
> but may force an awkward interface. One can invent conventions/
> libraries to access the parts of the SQL or RDF model with queries
> that parse syntactically as XQuery (though this may be like mixing a
> martini with a spatula).
>
> To prove the point, I was looking for a published or coded "standard"
> that would enable some idiom of XQuery to access to any relational
> database. Suppose I need to use up some asparagus and I use this
> mythical "standard" XQuery mapping for relational databases
>     LET $r := document("odbc://localhost/db")
>     FOR $recipe in $r[table="recipies"],
>         $supplies in $r[table="supplies"]
>     WHERE $supplies/primaryKey=$recipe/ingredients
>       and $supplies/name="asparagus"
>     RETURN $recipe/name
> to access a data base of two (poorly normalized) tables:
>   recipies:
>      name          ingredient  optional
>     cold cereal    3
>     cold cereal    7           1
> steamed asparagus  14
> steamed asparagus  33
>
>   supplies:
> primaryKey     name
> 3           dry cereal
> 7                 milk
> 14           asparagus
> 33               steam
>
> That was just to frame what I meant by a convention or standard for
> accessing relational databases. If we want to use that for DAWGQL,
> we could construct queries like
>     LET $t := document("odbc://localhost/db")
>     FOR $whoArc in $t[table="triples"],
>         $emailArc in $t[table="triples"]
>     WHERE $whoArc/predicate="<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name>"
>       and $whoArc/object="'Bob Smith'"
>       and $emailArc/subject=$whoArc/subject
>       and $emailArc/predicate="<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/mbox>"
>     RETURN $emailArc/object
> to execute a typical graph query (John Smith's email addr) on a
> table of RDF triples called triples.
>
> Then the DAWG could define a the XQuery mapping of the DAWGQL in
> terms of
>   1 Use the Foo SQL-XQuery mapping spec.
>   2 All triples are in a table called "triples" which has
>     the fields "predicate", "subject", "object".
> We probably wouldn't want to, but it would be worth looking at.
>
> BTW: I refer to DAWGQL *because* it's such an ugly name that it
> would never be used for anything but a placeholder.
>
> > > [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/11/13-RDF-Query-Rules/#XQueryFA
> > > [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/11/13-RDF-Query-Rules/#TreeHugger
> > > --
> > > -eric
> > >
> > > office: +81.466.49.1170 W3C, Keio Research Institute at SFC,
> > >                         Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Keio University,
> > >                         5322 Endo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8520
> > >                         JAPAN
> > >         +1.617.258.5741 NE43-344, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02144 USA
> > > cell:   +1.857.222.5741 (does not work in Asia)
> > >
> > > (eric@w3.org)
> > > Feel free to forward this message to any list for any purpose
> other than
> > > email address distribution.
> > >
>
> --
> -eric
>
> office: +81.466.49.1170 W3C, Keio Research Institute at SFC,
>                         Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Keio University,
>                         5322 Endo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8520
>                         JAPAN
>         +1.617.258.5741 NE43-344, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02144 USA
> cell:   +1.857.222.5741 (does not work in Asia)
>
> (eric@w3.org)
> Feel free to forward this message to any list for any purpose other than
> email address distribution.
>

Received on Friday, 16 April 2004 19:19:28 UTC