Basic SPARQL commands useful for OBO Engineers¶

Basic SELECT query¶

A basic SELECT query contains a set of prefixes, a SELECT clause and a WHERE clause.

PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>

SELECT ?term ?value
WHERE {
  ?term rdfs:label ?value .
}

Prefixes allow you to specify shortcuts. For example, instead of using the prefixes above, you could have simply said:

SELECT ?term ?value
WHERE {
  ?term <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> ?value .
}

Without the prefix. It means the exact same thing. But it looks nicer. Some people even go as far as adding entire entities into the prefix header:

PREFIX label: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label>

SELECT ?term ?value
WHERE {
  ?term label: ?value .
}

This query is, again, the same as the ones above, but even more concise.

The SELECT clause defines what you part of you query you want to show, for example, as a table.

SELECT ?term ?value

means: "return" or "show" whatever you find for the variable ?term and the variable ?value.

There are other cool things you can do in the SELECT clause: