- From: Steve Harris <steve.harris@garlik.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:02:00 +0000
- To: Andy Seaborne <andy.seaborne@talis.com>
- Cc: "public-rdf-dawg@w3.org Group" <public-rdf-dawg@w3.org>
On 11 Mar 2010, at 10:34, Andy Seaborne wrote: > It's not been a support issue with the released update language > documented in the submission. > > Style-wise, verb-rich does not worry me. The verbs should have a > logical categorization, separating deleting triples and managing > graphs say. > > In one design, theer was "REMOVE" for "DELETE DATA" - that did not > receive much enthusiasm. > > On 11/03/2010 08:29, Steve Harris wrote: >> Observation about SPARQL Update syntax: >> >> SPARQL Update is quite verb-rich, making it (IMHO) harder to learn >> the >> syntax, and it seems to me that one of CLEAR and DELETE is >> redundant now: >> >> DELETE GRAPH <a> >> DELETE DEFAULT # see previous mail > > I find that confusing usage - is that CLEAR or DROP? DELETE as in SQL, so CLEAR in SPARUL. DROP is distinct in both. I don't really see how DELETE WHERE { GRAPH <a> { ?x ?y ?z } } could be clear, but DELETE GRAPH <a> not be, but could be just me. c.f. DELETE FROM a ; DELETE FROM a WHERE 1 ; DROP a ; in SQL > You explain below it's CLEAR but reading it in natural language, I > would have gone for a reading of get rid of the GRAPH (i.e. DROP). OK, but anyone more familiar with SQL than SPARUL would understand I think. > It is useful to have an explicit "delete everything" operation > (rather than say "DELETE WHERE { ?s ?p ?o }" both for simple > implementations and also the application writer because it's quite a > major thing to do. Sure, I wasn't arguing against the sugar, just against giving the sugar it's own verb. > CLEAR is an abbreviation of the abbreviated syntax (half :-). Indeed :) > c.f. SQL TRUNCATE. > > Identifying the DEFAULT graph seems an interesting thing to do. That's for reasons of clarity, and (non-technical) ambiguity. See other mail. - Steve -- Steve Harris, Garlik Limited 2 Sheen Road, Richmond, TW9 1AE, UK +44 20 8973 2465 http://www.garlik.com/ Registered in England and Wales 535 7233 VAT # 849 0517 11 Registered office: Thames House, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AD
Received on Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:02:31 UTC