Re: Don't you use GeoSPARQL? [ was: Do you use GeoSPARQL?]

On 28.07.20 22:06, Frans Knibbe wrote:

Hi Frans,

>   * Have you ever used GeoSPARQL? If so, any problems?

yes, love it. But it also sucks due to bad spec. Off the top of my head:

- spec is unreadable in its current PDF form. I tried to make a HTML
version myself once but gave up as the PDF is really utterly broken. So
please make this a proper HTML spec like SPARQL & co.

- I'm not sure if it's due to the bad spec, missing testcases for
developers (?) or lack of sample queries that clearly show how to use
it, but it was really hard for me to understand how I am supposed to
write a proper query that did what I wanted to do.

I'm good in SPARQL but I really did not dig GeoSPARQL for a long time.
For a while I also had the impression that every implementation (Fuseki
vs Stardog vs Virtuoso) behaved differently or was broken. It got better
now but it's not a good sign if those who implement it can't agree on
it. Might be also related to:

- the fact that the geometry is on its own node does not make it easy. I
see the point in some use-cases (hasGeometry vs defaultGeometry for
example), but maybe there could be a simpler representation for default
use-cases

- why there is a asWKT property beats me. I mean we have datatypes and
we use them so why would one name the property according to the datatype
used in the literal? IMO there should be a neutral property and based on
the datatype of the literal the store figures out what serialization it
is. Also not sure what is hip in the JSON world today but maybe it's
time for some GeoJSON like support as well. Or whatever is used in the
web stack nowadays.

>   * Domains like geography, astronomy, biology, computer graphics, web
>     graphics, building information modelling (BIM) and computer aided
>     design (CAD) all use spatial data. Have you ever tried to somehow
>     combine different types of spatial data or spatial knowledge? If so,
>     how was that experience?

the functions that everyone implements are rather basic and the rest is
often not straight forward to add so I had limited success with anything
besides default functions.

regards

Adrian

Received on Tuesday, 28 July 2020 20:33:02 UTC