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The SPARQL 1.2 Query Language defines several Query
Result Forms (SPARQL Query section 10). This document defines a SPARQL Results
Document that encodes the variable binding query results from SELECT
queries (SPARQL Query section
10.2) and boolean query results from ASK
queries (SPARQL Query section 10.5) in XML.
There are two other results formats which follow a similar design but do not use XML: SPARQL 1.2 Query Results JSON Format and SPARQL 1.2 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats.
Definition: SPARQL Results Document
A SPARQL Results Document is an XML document that is valid with respect to either the RELAX NG XML Schema or the W3C XML Schema in Section 4.
The SPARQL Results Document begins with sparql
document element in the http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#
namespace, written as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
...
</sparql>
Inside the sparql
element are two sub-elements, head
and a results element (either results
or boolean
) which must appear in that order.
If no literals with base direction appear in the results, the sparql
document element may be simplified as follows.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#">
...
</sparql>
Different values of its:version
are allowed.
The head
element is the first child element of the sparql
element.
For a variable binding query result, head
must contain a sequence of elements describing the set of
Query Variable names in the
Solution Sequence (here called query results).
The order of the variable names in the sequence is the order of the variable names given to the argument of the SELECT
statement in the SPARQL query. If SELECT *
is
used, the order of the names is undefined.
Inside the head
element, the ordered sequence of variable names chosen are used to create empty child elements variable
with the variable name as the value of an
attribute name
giving a document like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
<head>
<variable name="x"/>
<variable name="hpage"/>
<variable name="name"/>
<variable name="mbox"/>
<variable name="blurb"/>
</head>
...
</sparql>
For a boolean query result, no elements are required inside head
and variable
must not be present.
For any query result, head
may also contain link
child elements with an href
attribute containing a relative URI that provides a link to some additional
metadata about the query results. The relative URI is resolved against the in-scope base URI which is usually the query results format document URI. link
elements must appear after any
variable
elements that are present.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
<head>
...
<link href="metadata.rdf"/>
</head>
...
</sparql>
The second child-element of sparql
must appear after head
and is either results
or boolean
. It is written even if the query results are
empty.
The results
element contains the complete sequence of query results.
For each Query Solution in the query results, a result
child-element of
results
is added giving a document like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
... head ...
<results>
<result>...
</result>
<result>...
</result>
...
</results>
</sparql>
Each result
element corresponds to one Query Solution in a result and contains child elements (in no particular order) for each Query Variable that appears in the
solution. It is used to record how the query variables bind to RDF Terms.
Each binding inside a solution is written as an element binding
as a child of result
with the query variable name as the value of the name
attribute. So
for a result binding two variables x and hpage it would look like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
<head>
<variable name="x"/>
<variable name="hpage"/>
</head>
<results>
<result>
<binding name="x"> ... </binding>
<binding name="hpage"> ... </binding>
</result>
<result>
<binding name="x"> ... </binding>
<binding name="hpage"> ... </binding>
</result>
...
</results>
</sparql>
The value of a query variable binding, which is an RDF Term, is included as the content of the binding
as follows:
<binding><uri>
U</uri></binding>
<binding><literal>
S</literal></binding>
<binding><literal xml:lang="
L">
S</literal></binding>
<binding><literal xml:lang="
L" its:dir="
B">
S</literal></binding>
<binding><literal datatype="
D">
S</literal></binding>
<binding><bnode>
I</bnode></binding>
<binding>
<triple>
<subject>
S</subject>
<predicate>
P</predicate>
<object>
O</object>
</triple>
</binding>
If, for a particular solution, a variable is unbound, no binding
element for that variable is included in the result
element.
S, P, and O in Triple Terms are encoded recursively, using the same format, without the enclosing <binding>
tag
Note: The blank node label I is scoped to the result set XML document and need not have any association to the blank node label for that RDF Term in the query graph.
An example of a query solution encoded in this format is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
<head>
<variable name="x"/>
<variable name="hpage"/>
<variable name="name"/>
<variable name="age"/>
<variable name="mbox"/>
<variable name="friend"/>
</head>
<results>
<result>
<binding name="x">
<bnode>r2</bnode>
</binding>
<binding name="hpage">
<uri>http://work.example.org/bob/</uri>
</binding>
<binding name="name">
<literal xml:lang="en">Bob</literal>
</binding>
<binding name="age">
<literal datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#integer">30</literal>
</binding>
<binding name="mbox">
<uri>mailto:[email protected]</uri>
</binding>
...
</results>
</sparql>
An example of a query solution that includes triple terms is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
its:version="2.0">
<head>
<variable name="x"/>
<variable name="name"/>
<variable name="triple"/>
</head>
<results>
<result>
<binding name="x">
<bnode>r2</bnode>
</binding>
<binding name="name">
<literal xml:lang="en">Bob</literal>
</binding>
<binding name="triple">
<triple>
<subject>
<uri>http://example.org/alice</uri>
</subject>
<predicate>
<uri>http://example.org/name</uri>
</predicate>
<object>
<literal datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">Alice</literal>
</object>
</triple>
</binding>
</result>
...
</results>
</sparql>
A boolean result is written as the element content of a boolean
child-element of the sparql
element directly after a head
, containing either
true
or false
as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#">
... head ...
<boolean>true</boolean>
</sparql>
An example SELECT
SPARQL Query in example.rq operating on query graph Turtle/N3 data in data.ttl providing ordered variable binding query results written in XML in output.srx.
This XML can be transformed into XHTML using the sample XML Query script result-to-html.xq giving output-xquery.html or with XSLT sheet result-to-html.xsl giving output-xslt.html
An example SELECT
SPARQL Query in example-triple-terms.rq operating on query graph Turtle/N3 data in data.ttl providing ordered variable binding query results written in XML in output-triple-terms.srx. These results contain triple terms.
An example ASK
SPARQL Query in example2.rq operating on query graph Turtle/N3 data in data.ttl provides a boolean query result written in XML in output2.srx.
This XML can be transformed into XHTML using the sample XML Query script result-to-html.xq giving output-xquery2.html or with XSLT sheet result-to-html.xsl giving output-xslt2.html
There are normative XML schemas provided in the following formats:
If W3C XML Schema is used, an xsi:schemaLocation
attribute can be used pointing to the schema as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<sparql xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results#"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2005/sparql-results# http://www.w3.org/2007/SPARQL/result.xsd">
...
</sparql>
This section is non-normative.
The Internet Media Type (formerly known as MIME Type) for the SPARQL Query Results XML Format is "application/sparql-results+xml".
It is recommended that result files have the extension ".srx" (all lowercase) on all platforms.
It is recommended that result files stored on Macintosh HFS file systems be given a file type of "TEXT".
SPARQL query results uses URIs. See Section 7 of [RFC3986].
SPARQL query results uses IRIs. See Section 8 of [RFC3987].
As this media type uses the "+xml" convention, it shares the same security considerations as described in [RFC3023], section 10.
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