SPARQL

What is SPARQL

SPARQL is a query language for semantic databases using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) format

Tutorial

There are quite a few tutorials out there for SPARQL e.g.

1. W3C SPARQL By Example
2. Apache Jena SPARQL

This tutorial is for people which are new to semantic concepts but would like to use an example with a fair amount of data but not too much of complexity in the structure of the data.

Semantic Concepts

Personally I learned Semantic Concepts using Semantic MediaWiki see

1. Wolfgang Fahl's User page at www.semantic-mediawiki.org
2. Semantic Concepts Talk at SMWCon 2015

When using SPARQL a tutorial needs to get a slightly different touch, so for those who know the talk above I'll explain some key concepts based on an example using:

1. Countries
2. Towns
3. Municipal Units

Triples

A semantic statement has the form

<subject> <predicate> <object>

e.g.

Dubai is-located-in AE

is such a semantic statement which is also called a Triple.

The natural language statement "Dubai is located in United Arab Emirates" is purposely slightly modified to a more "computer-ready" form. The predicate has been written as is-located-in to make it a proper Identifier. And the country-name "United Arab Emirates" has been replaced by its two letter United Nations Location Code AE.

TripleStore

A Triplestore is a database that can store and query triples. I fact for educational purposes I have written a simple Triplestore myself:

• https://github.com/BITPlan/org.sidif.triplestore

For that simple triplestore the triples are supplied in Simple Data Interchange Format.