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Get hands-on experience with SPARQL, the RDF query language that's become a key component of the semantic web. With this concise book, you will learn how to use the latest version of this W3C standard to retrieve and manipulate the increasing amount of public and private data available via SPARQL endpoints. Several open source and commercial tools already support SPARQL, and this introduction gets you started right away.
Begin with how to write and run simple SPARQL 1.1 queries, then dive into the language's powerful features and capabilities for manipulating the data you retrieve. Learn what you need to know to add to, update, and delete data in RDF datasets, and give web applications access to this data.
Understand SPARQL’s connection with RDF, the semantic web, and related specifications
Query and combine data from local and remote sources
Copy, convert, and create new RDF data
Learn how datatype metadata, standardized functions, and extension functions contribute to your queries
Incorporate SPARQL queries into web-based applications
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Bob DuCharme (http://www.snee.com/bob) is a solutions architect at TopQuadrant, a provider of software for modeling, developing, and deploying semantic web applications. He came to TopQuadrant from Innodata Isogen, where he did system and architecture analysis and design for a wide range of global publishing clients as well as cochairing the 2008 Linked Data Planet conference in New York City. Earlier in his career, he oversaw SGML and XML development at Moody's Investors Service and then moved on to LexisNexis, where he did data and systems architecture as they made the transition to XML-based systems.
In the XML.com newsletter, editor Kendall Clark once wrote “Does anyone write tech prose as clear as Bob?” Bob is the author of Manning Publications’ “XSLT Quickly,” Prentice Hall’s “XML: The Annotated Specification” and “SGML CD,” and McGraw Hill’s “Operating Systems Handbook.” He's written over 70 pieces for XML.com and has contributed to Dr. Dobb’s Journal, IBM developerWorks, Nodalities, DevX, perl.com, XML Magazine, XML Journal, XML Developer, O’Reilly Books’ “XML Hacks,” and Prentice Hall’s “XML Handbook.” Bob received his BA in Religion from Columbia University and his Master’s in Computer Science from New York University. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife Jennifer and their daughters Madeline and Alice.
The book is a useful introduction to the subject. Although, the basic explanation about the semantic web and the role of SPARQL is not until chapter 2 onwards. This throws you of when chapter 1 goes into SPARQL commands out of context of the background. I would still recommend it as a useful introduction although there may well be better books on the market.
This is a very useful book for anybody setting out to learn SPARQL for the first time or maybe improve their existing skills. It was great to be able to explore the language with a practical focus.
The book surprisingly starts out by getting the reader to dive straight in to writing SPARQL queries before moving on in the next chapter to explaining the terminology involved. Before the end of the first chapter the reader will have queried a public data source to answer a real world question, a great move that could inspire a bit of confidence and enthusiasm for learning more about the subject. The book then moves more into depth exploring the features of both SPARQL 1.0 and 1.1 including more complex queries, creating, updating and validating data and using SPARQL in programs.
I learnt a lot from this book and will use it in future as a reference. The only real criticism I have is that the chapters could have been split up a bit more. Each one covered quite a large chunk of material. I think this would have made the book slightly easier to use. This is not a book for computer novices though, some knowledge of XML, SQL and the command line is needed.
Disclosure: I got my ebook review copy for free through the O'Reilly Blogger Review Programme.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:4.8 out of 5 stars 9 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsgreat read, very informative, inexpensive on kindle30 Jan 2012
By Kim D. Letkeman - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
It doesn't get much better than this. A concise and well-written discussion of various fundamentals of RDF followed by a progressive stepping through SPARQL, both 1.0 and 1.1. I paid less than 10 bucks on kindle and I got my money's worth before the end of chapter 2.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent book on SPARQL26 Nov 2011
By David Witherspoon - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I have been working with the Semantic Web for the past two years and I have read many book, forums, and specifications learning about the different component that make up the Semantic Web. I had always know that SPARQL would be similar to SQL due to the fact that they are both query languages, but I did not realize how powerful SPARQL queries could be and all the great functions that are provided in the language until reading Bob DuCharme book Learning SPARQL. It seemed that even with all of the experience that I had gained on creating SPARQL queries by reading web sits, forums, and specifications on SPARQL 1.1, I found so many great techniques and functions that I did not know SPARQL supported. The examples that are provided in the book are excellent and help solidify the query term and/or function that the author is presenting. I started to read this book in order to learn more about SPARQL and see if it could help out in some areas of the project that I was working on or not. Not only was I able to find great features that SPARQL supports, I actually learned better ways to write the SPARQL queries that were more efficient. Gaining the knowledge in both of these areas helped my project out and regret that I have is that I should have read this book sooner.
The book is very well organized and will allow anyone from a novice to someone with more experience to learn something new throughout the book. The author starts out by diving right in to SPARQL queries and provides a great overview of queries against a RDF triple store. Then he proceeds by providing a chapter dedicated to the background of the Semantic Web, RDF, SPARQL, and Linked Data. From there he dives right into the meat of SPARQL and it only gets better from there. My favorite chapters were 5 and 6, where he talked about functions supported in SPARQL and updating data with SPARQL. The reason that I found these chapters to be the most interesting was the fact that I learned a lot a great things in those chapters alone. In addition, I was able to apply what I had learned to my project and see the added value immediately. For example, I knew that SPARQL supported named graphes, I just never realized all the cool things that you can do with graphs within SPARQL.
I would recommend this to anyone that wants to learn more about SPARQL or doesn't know a thing about it and wants to query a RDF triple store like DBpedia. For any developer that is working with the semantic web and doesn't want to spend hours and hours searching the web in order to see what can be done with SPARQL, this is the book/reference for you.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsEssential Book On The Semantic Web15 Sep 2011
By Paul A. Houle - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Until very recently, people learning semantic web technology had to go to technical standards documents that were often abstruse and difficult to read. Like Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, "Learning SPARQL" uncovers how simple RDF and SPARQL really are. Anyone who's done linked data projects (where it's easy to get 200+ million triples) will appreciate the focus on performance, data cleaning, and queries for exploring data sets -- the author's real world experience shows through.
If there's a weakness, some of the examples are a little too simple, and the author even apologizes for this sometimes, but this is a concise book that will have you using and enjoying SPARQL very quickly. If SPARQL is part of your life, or if you're trying to understand the basics of the semantic web, get it right now.
