Introduction: Andy Seaborne

Role: Primary representative for Hewlett-Packard.

I am a researcher in HPLabs in the semantic web research group.  I work in the area of query and storage of RDF and participated in the RDF Data Access Working group last time round.  Eric Prud'hommeaux and I were the editors of the query language recommendation.

Introduction from last time:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2004JanMar/0006.html


As well work on the standard, I have also been responsible for the implementation of SPARQL for Jena (a semantic framework for Java, which also runs on .Net) which includes the query engine (ARQ [1]) and the server for the SPARQL protocol (Joseki [2]).  We provide an online validator for SPARQL [3] which an be used to test syntax and also to see the SPARQL algebra form of a query.

For this working group, I believe that standardization is particularly important for the semantic web because information publishers and information consumers are not within the same organization nor are there fixed relationships between systems with these roles.  Publication is an act that does not presume a single intended use of the information so information publishers and information consumers do not share the same intent.  All they have to publish and access information are the standards and systems that implement those standards.

I see keeping to the schedule is important because there are limitations to the current SPARQL query language that can be readily addressed [4].  There will also be some ideas and features that deserve more time and consideration.  Balancing these two will be critical and unlikely to be easy. 

An aspect of timeliness is a good level of community involvement and I am keen to make this as open a process as practical and to get early feedback from the wider community.  I don't believe that the extensions available in ARQ or in SPARQL/Update [5] are necessarily the best solutions to requirements, only that they do show there are implementable features in various areas so I'm looking forward to understanding what the community needs from SPARQL.
 
Generally, email is a good way of contacting me, on the working group list for SPARQL-WG related conversations unless there is something specially offlist to discuss.  I try to also be on the #sparql IRC channel at W3C as 'AndyS'.  I'm on UK time, based in Bristol, UK.

 Andy

[1] ARQ: http://jena.sf.net/ARQ

    The documentation page describes the extensions:
    http://jena.sourceforge.net/ARQ/documentation.html

[2] http://www.joseki.org/

[3] Validator: http://www.sparql.org/validator.html
[4] WWW2008 BOF
    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sparql-dev/2008AprJun/0023.html

[5] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2008/SUBM-SPARQL-Update-20080715/


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Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 15:02:14 UTC