The RDF Data Access Working Group has published three SPARQL recommendations (Query Language, Protocol, and Results Format) in January 2008. SPARQL has become very widely implemented and used since then (and, in fact, even before the specification achieved a W3C Recommendation status). Usage and implementation of SPARQL have revealed requirements for extensions to the query langauge that are needed by applications. Most of these were already known and recorded when developing the current Recommendation, but there was not enough implementation and and usage experience at the time for standardization. Current implementation experience and feedback from the user community makes it now feasible to handle some of those issues in a satisfactory manner.
The mission of the SPARQL Working Group, part of the Semantic Web Activity, is to produce a Working Group Note identifying requirements for an extension of SPARQL. The extension is a small set of additional features that
No Recommendation Track documents will be produced under this charter. The requirements specified in the Group Note will be used to create a new charter proposal for a Phase II of the work, whose ultimate goal will be to produce a new SPARQL Recommendation.
Note that a strict backward compatibility with exisiting SPARQL design should be mantained, and currently no radical redefinition of the SPARQL language is envisaged. The list of postponed issues, the minutes of a SPARQL WWW2008 BOF meeting held in Beijing, China, in April 2008 (see also an more detailed writup of the same meeting), the community’s discussion results documented on W3C’s ESW Wiki, or the SPARQL Update Member Submission and the team comments thereof may form the basis of this extension, but the Working Group will also consider other submissions.
End date | 30 July 2009 |
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Confidentiality | Proceedings are public |
Initial Chairs | Lee Feigenbaum Axel Polleres |
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 30) |
Eric Prud’hommeaux (20%) Ivan Herman (10%) |
Usual Meeting Schedule | Teleconferences: Weekly Face-to-face: 1 |
Although the community has expressed opinions on various types of extensions to SPARQL, this Working Group is only chartered to enumerate a set of extensions that are expected to be widely used and can be shown to exist in multiple, interoperable implementations. It is not the goal of this Working Group to propose a significant upgrade of the SPARQL language. Examples for the extensions to the SPARQL, to be considered by this Working Group, include:
Note that this charter does not mandate which extensions to SPARQL the Working Group will select. The task of the group, documented as its deliverable (see the section on Milestones below) is to produce a final and prioritized list of extensions that the group proposes. This deliverable will become the basis for a new charter to undertake Recommendation Track work.
The group will also take into consideration the errors on the documents reported by the community since the publication of the SPARQL documents in January 2008, and stored in the public archives of the relevant mailing list.
Backwards compatibility with the current version of SPARQL is of great importance. All queries that are valid in the January 2008 version of SPARQL should remain valid in the new version and should produce identical results. For each new feature, if there is doubt or a perceived problem with respect to this, the guideline should be to not include the feature in the set of extensions.
(The title of the document is indicative only)
Furthermore, RDF Data Access Working Group expects to follow these W3C Recommendations:
To be successful, the SPARQL Working Group is expected to have 10 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to SPARQL Working Group is expected to consume one work day per week for each participant; two days per week for editors.
Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.
This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-rdf-dawg@w3.org (with a publicly visible archive) .
Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the SPARQL Working Group home page.
As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.
This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.
For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.
This charter for the SPARQL Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.
Please also see the previous charter for this group.
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