- From: Fred Zemke <fred.zemke@oracle.com>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:51:00 -0700
- To: public-rdf-dawg@w3.org
In my paper attached to http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2006AprJun/0170.html on page 15, I posed the question of how to interpret queries of the form { P1 } UNION {P2} OPTIONAL {P3}. I maintained that the first operand of OPTIONAL must be an empty pattern, based on BNF rule [20] GraphPattern, which shows that an OptionalGraphPattern is necessarily preceded by a FilteredBasicGraphPattern, which I took to be the first operand. In private communication Andy Seaborne pointed me to the SPARQLer validator at http://www.sparql.org/validator.html . Since Andy pointed me at it, I assume the group regards it as a guide for interpreting the draft. So I played around with it. My observation of its behavior is as follows: 1. If an OPTIONAL is the very first token within a GroupGraphPattern, then an implicit empty FilteredBasicGraphPattern is taken as its first operand. 2. Otherwise the GroupGraphPattern is of the form { GraphPattern } where the GraphPattern, according to rule [20], expands recursively into something of the form Filtered1 NotTriples1 Filtered2 NotTriples2 ... Filteredn NotTriplesn where Filteredi is a FilteredBasicGraphPattern and NotTriplesi is a GraphPatternNotTriples. Let j be the subscript of the particular NotTriplesj that is the OptionalGraphPattern whose first operand is sought. There are two subcases: a) Possibly Filteredj is not an empty pattern. In that case, Filteredj is taken as the first operand of the OPTIONAL. b) If Filteredj is the empty pattern, then note that j cannot be 1 (otherwise rule 1 above would apply). Therefore NotTriples(j-1) exists, and if we examine the BNF for NotTriples, we see that it can never be an empty pattern. So we take NotTriples(j-1) as the first operand of OPTIONAL. Examples: 1. WHERE { OPTIONAL { P1 } } In this example, OPTIONAL is the first keyword within a GroupGraphPattern so rule 1 applies. 2. WHERE { ?x ?y ?z OPTIONAL { P2 } } In this example, the OPTIONAL is preceded by a non-empty FilteredBasicGraphPattern, which is the operand of the OPTIONAL by rule 2)a) 3. WHERE { ?x ?y ?z { OPTIONAL { P2 } } } This example nests the OPTIONAL inside of braces, making it the first token within a GroupGraphPattern. Therefore its first operand is an implicit empty pattern. 4. WHERE { {P1} UNION {P2} OPTIONAL {P3} } In this example, the OPTIONAL is preceded by a NotTriples, the UNION. Therefore {P1} UNION {P2} is the first operand of OPTIONAL 5. WHERE { {P1} UNION { {P2} OPTIONAL {P3} } } This example shows how to use {} to regroup example 4, forcing {P2} as the operand of OPTIONAL, rather than the UNION. Examples 4 and 5 show tricky cases. Note that in 4, the use of rule 2)b) does not make {P2} the operand of OPTIONAL, because {P2} is nested within the NotTriple that is the UNION. 6. WHERE { ?x ?y ?z OPTIONAL {P2} OPTIONAL {P3} } The first operand of the first OPTIONAL is "?x ?y ?z". For the first operand of the second OPTIONAL, it is preceded by a NotTriple which is the first OPTIONAL. So the first OPTIONAL is the first operand of the second OPTIONAL. Can other people confirm or deny that I have correctly stated the intention? Fred
Received on Friday, 23 June 2006 00:51:32 UTC