Re: Proposed updates to the SPARQL 1.1 test suite

Against:

Rationale:
At least some of the examples,
e.g.
sparql11/data-sparql11/exists/existsHernandez01.rq
are sufficiently awkward, that:
a: the current spec is not very clear
b: in practice two conflicting issues (scope in EXISTS and scope in sub-selects) suggest different results
c: the previous working group does not appear to have been aware of the conflict, and bluntly, made a mistake.

This can only be addressed by a substantive change.

My belief is that during the errata process, which we are currently in, substantive changes should be discouraged, except where clarifying the believed intent of the working group.

I believe Peter and others have done the community a service by highlighting these issues.

I believe the best way forward is:
a) as part of the errata process to warn against using such SPARQL constructs, i.e. as best as possible characterized the queries impacted by this defect, and advise users against asking them, and implementors against answering them
b) wait for the next iteration of the working group to address the issue.

(On (a) I found Peter’s assertion that EXISTS is broken to be somewhat polemical: there is clearly a much narrower set of unclear queries than any query containing EXISTS)


Jeremy Carroll

Syapse Inc
Palo Alto

(personal opinion, not discussed with my colleagues)





> On Jun 19, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Gregg Kellogg <gregg@greggkellogg.net> wrote:
> 
> Peter has proposed updates to the SPARQL 1.1 test suite [1][2] to describe expected behavior for EXISTS for which the specification text is problematic. This is described further in [3].
> 
> This is a call for consensus to update the test suite maintained by the RDF Tests CG at [4].
> 
> Gregg Kellogg
> gregg@greggkellogg.net
> 
> [1] https://github.com/w3c/rdf-tests/issues/42
> [2] https://github.com/w3c/rdf-tests/pull/43
> [3] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-tests/2016Jun/0000.html
> [4] https://github.com/w3c/rdf-tests/tree/gh-pages/sparql11