Re: Expressions in SELECT

Andy Seaborne wrote on 10/17/2006 01:45:17 PM:

> Fred,
> 
> The design message I metioned was:
> 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2006AprJun/0145
> 
> An explicit assigment might be the best long term approach if it is also
> available in the main part of the query, otherwise a syntax that is
> specific to the SELECT clause seems more appropriate.  To be compatible
> with the results format as it stands, there needs to be a variable name
> - that could change to a more general label - but just positional does
> not work because the XML results format omits unbound variables, not
> record them explicitly. 

To hopefully help hasten a decision on the punctuationSyntax issue, I just 
wanted to write a note to state that we're (Elias and I -- IBM) in favor 
of keeping the SELECT clause syntax as-is for the current version of 
SPARQL. We're sympathetic to people's desires to allow expressions in the 
SELECT list, but are also confident (in part thanks to Andy's message 
referenced above) that keeping the current comma-less design will not 
prohibit expressions in the SELECT list in the future.

Lee