7.15 Other Recommendations and Guidelines

This section contains various recommendations and other information related to SPARQL queries.

• BOUND or !BOUND Instead of EXISTS or NOT EXISTS
  
• SPARQL 1.1 SELECT Expressions
  
• Syntax Involving Bnodes (Blank Nodes)
  
• Limit in the SERVICE Clause
  

7.15.1 BOUND or !BOUND Instead of EXISTS or NOT EXISTS

For better performance, use BOUND or !BOUND instead of EXISTS or NOT EXISTS.

7.15.2 SPARQL 1.1 SELECT Expressions

You can use SPARQL 1.1 SELECT expressions without any significant performance overhead, even if the function is not currently supported within Oracle Database. Examples include the following:

-- Query using SHA1 function
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX xsd:  <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX eg:   <http://biometrics.example/ns#>
SELECT ?name ?email (sha1(?email) as ?sha1) 
WHERE 
{ 
  ?x foaf:name  ?name ; eg:email ?email .
}

-- Query using CONCAT function
PREFIX foaf:   <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
SELECT ( CONCAT(?G, " ", ?S) AS ?name )
WHERE  
{ 
  ?P foaf:givenName ?G ; foaf:surname ?S 
}

7.15.3 Syntax Involving Bnodes (Blank Nodes)

Syntax involving bnodes can be used freely in query patterns. For example, the following bnode-related syntax is supported at the parser level, so each is equivalent to its full triple-query-pattern-based version.

:x :q [ :p "v" ] .
 
(1 ?x 3 4) :p "w" .
 
(1 [:p :q] ( 2 ) ) .

7.15.4 Limit in the SERVICE Clause

When writing a SPARQL 1.1 federated query, you can set a limit on returned rows in the subquery inside the SERVICE clause. This can effectively constrain the amount of data to be transported between the local repository and the remote SPARQL endpoint.

For example, the following query specifies limit 100 in the subquery in the SERVICE clause:

PREFIX : <http://example.com/>
SELECT ?s ?o 
 WHERE 
     { 
       ?s :name "CA"  
       SERVICE <http://REMOTE_SPARQL_ENDPOINT_HERE>
          {
             select ?s  ?o 
                 {?s :info ?o} 
              limit 100 
           } 
     }