Re: SPARQL Query 1.1 review comments

Andy and Steve, 



Thanks for looking at the comments on such a short notice. 



You can ignore my comment about 8.1 (Negation Syntax). It was more of a minor prett y-printing nit-picking . But, now I see that it is consistent with the way the grammar is specified. (Regarding WS, I am assuming that whitespaces are allowed between the (NOT) EXISTS and the GroupGraphPattern.) 



Regarding my comments about "value of expression in presence of operands of incorrect data types" ("semantics unclear" in Sec 2.5, Sec 13.1.2, and Sec 9): The idea of skipping the binding (effectively binding=null?) sounds good. 



For the query example in Sec 9, I still think it will nicely show the grouping aspect if  we extend the SELECT list slightly to SELECT ?org (SUM(?lprice) AS ?totalPrice) . 



One more  question: Are we always requiring an alias for an expression? That is, would SELECT SUM(?lprice) ... (i.e., without the alias ?totalPrice) be allowed? 



Thanks, 

- Souri. 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: andy.seaborne@talis.com 
To: SOURIPRIYA.DAS@oracle.com 
Cc: public-rdf-dawg@w3.org 
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2010 8:40:38 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: SPARQL Query 1.1 review comments 


Souri- thank you for you comments which are addressed below toegther with Steve's earlier mesaage. 

On 05/01/2010 5:19 AM, Souripriya Das wrote: 






Here are my (slightly rushed :-)) review comments: 

    • [Section 2.5: Creating Values with Expressions] 


        • [semantics unclear] If a solution for a query with "SELECT ?x ?y ..." would include bindings ?x="10"^^xsd:integer and ?y="Hello", then what would happen to that solution for "SELECT ?x+?y ..."? 


            • Would that solution be skipped (i.e., Is there an implicit directive that a solution is returned only if all the SELECT-list expressions can be evaluated without error?)? 
            • The solution would be returned, but the value of the expression will show up as error. 

There are three design possibilities - whole results are an error, skip the row or skip just the binding.  Binding an error token is strange (typing; and also whether it itself can occur RDF). I think that causing everythign to be an error is bad because it does not scale and is at odds with the SPARQL design. 

The design I have in mind skips just the binding.  The extend operator works on one binding, not an entire row.  I have fixed the definition (it had an "and" where it needed "or"). 

    extend(μ, var, expr) = μ if var not in dom(μ) or eval(expr) is an error 








        • [would like to know] Are we allowing expressions for CONSTRUCT as well? 

There are no plans for that - it can be done with sub-SELECT. 







    • [Section 3: RDF Term Constraints (Informative)] 


        • [typo] Subsections for Section 3 show only "3.1 Other Term Constraints" in the content, but there are two other subsections: "3.1 Restricting the Value of Strings" and "3.2 Restricting Numeric Values". 

The XML was malformed for the xmlspec.xsl script.  Fixed. 







    • [Section 13.1.2: "SELECT expressions "] 


        • [typo] change: SELCT => SELECT 
Done 








        • [semantics unclear] What is the value of an expression if any of the operands of an operator does not have the proper data type? Do we ignore (i.e., not return) the corresponding solution? Or, do we return a pre-designated RDF error term in place of the value of that expression? 


            • For example, if the RDF data shown is altered to replace: the triple, : book1  ns:price  42 , with  :book1  ns:price  "priceless ", then what will be the results for the two queries? 

See sec 2.5. comment above. 







    • [Section 9: Aggregate Functions] 


        • [semantics unclear] Somewhat similar question as in the case of SELECT expressions: How to evaluate an expression, in this case aggregate functions, in presence of values of different types? For example, what would be ?totalPrice if instead of :book3 :price 7, we had : book3 :price "priceless "? 
        • [enhance the query] In the query example, could we extend the SELECT list from SELECT (SUM(?lprice) AS ?totalPrice) to, say, SELECT ?org (SUM(?lprice) AS ?totalPrice), or further extend to SELECT ?org COUNT(DISTINCT ?author) (SUM(?lprice) AS ?totalPrice)? Just selecting SUM(?lprice) is not very interesting. 
    • 
[Section 10: Subqueries] 

        • [fix the query] The query does not seem right. Specifically, the outer SELECT list cannot include ?name which is not exposed by (that is, not in the SELECT list of) the subquery. [Also, a minor typo: has an extra '}'.] One possible way to fix it would be: 







PREFIX : < http://people.example/ > 
PREFIX : < http://people.example/ > 
SELECT ?y ?minName 
WHERE { 
  :alice :knows ?y . 
  { 
    SELECT ?y (MIN(?name) AS ?minName ) 
    WHERE { 
      ?y :name ?name . 
    } GROUP BY ?y 
  } 
} 




        • [more details needed] May need more details about the scope of variables mentioned in the subquery. 
    • 
[Section 8.1: Negation Syntax] 

        • [typo] We need to put a blank space between 'EXISTS' (or 'NOT EXISTS') and GroupGraphPattern 
I don't understand this comment.  Exactly which point in the doc are you referring to? 

Or do you mean the grammar needs to specify a space is needed between EXISTS and GrroupGraphPattern (it's not - covered by the WS rules of the grammar). 


    Andy