ARQ - Basic Federated SPARQL Query

There are already ways to access remote RDF data. The simplest is to read a document which is an RDF graph and query it. Another way is with the SPARQL protocol which allows a query to be sent to a remote service endpoint and the results sent back (in RDF, or an XML-based results format or even a JSON one).

The SERVICE extension adds the ability to make SPARQL protocol calls within a query, not just send the whole query to the remote service.

Syntax

A new keyword SERVICE is added to the extended SPARQL query language in ARQ. This keyword causes the sub-pattern to be sent to a named SPARQL service endpoint, and not matched against a local graph.

PREFIX : <http://example/>
PREFIX  dc:     <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>

SELECT ?a
FROM <mybooks.rdf>
{
  ?b dc:title ?title .
  SERVICE <http://sparql.org/books>
     { ?s dc:title ?title . ?s dc:creator ?a }
}

Algebra

There is a new operator in the algebra.

(prefix ((dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>))
  (project (?a)
    (join
      (BGP [triple ?b dc:title ?title])
      (service <http://sparql.org/books>
          (BGP
            [triple ?s dc:title ?title]
            [triple ?s dc:creator ?a]
          ))
      )))

Performance Considerations

This feature is a basic building block to allow remote access in the middle of a query, not a general solution to the issues in distributed query evaluation. The algebra operation is executed without regard to how selective the pattern is. So the order of the query will affect the speed of execution. Because it involves HTTP operations, asking the query in the right order matters a lot. Don't ask for the whole of a bookstore just to find book whose title comes from a local RDF file - ask the bookshop a query with the title already bound from earlier in the query.

ARQ Documentation Page