FILTER in abbreviated delete

Hi everyone,

SPARQL Update has a DELETE operation that looks something like:

  DELETE { modify_template [ modify_template ]* }
  [ WHERE GroupGraphPattern ]

(I'm ignoring WITH since it's not important to this question).

As a convenience, the WHERE clause is optional. If it is missing then
the full modify_template is also treated as a WHERE clause. So this
statement:
  DELETE { modify_template }

Is to be treated identically to:
  DELETE { modify_template }
  WHERE { modify_template }


A slight modification to this would also permit FILTERs to be added to
the template. In this case, the original statement would be of the
form:
  DELETE { modify_template FILTER (filter_expression) }

which would be identical in effect to:
  DELETE { modify_template }
  WHERE { modify_template FILTER (filter_expression) }


Do people have a preference for allowing FILTER in this way or not?
I'd like to emphasize that this is syntactic sugar for a common use
case, so there is no new functionality being proposed.

Regards,
Paul Gearon

Received on Friday, 8 January 2010 16:30:20 UTC