Research – Paper 124

LDScript: a Linked Data Script Language Olivier Corby, Catherine Faron-Zucker and Fabien Gandon Research October 25, 2017, 10:30. Stolz 1 Download paper (preprint)

Abstract

In addition to the existing standards dedicated to representation or querying, Semantic Web programmers could really benefit from a dedicated programming language enabling them to directly define functions on RDF terms, RDF graphs or SPARQL results. This is especially the case, for instance, when defining SPARQL extension functions. The ability to capitalize complex SPARQL filter expressions into extension functions or to define and reuse dedicated aggregates are real cases where a dedicated language can support modularity and maintenance of the code. Other families of use cases include the definition of functional properties associated to RDF resources or the definition of procedural attachments as functions assigned to RDFS or OWL classes with the selection of the function to be applied to a resource depending on the type of the resource. To address these needs we define LDScript, a Linked Data script language on top of the SPARQL filter expression language. We provide the formal grammar of the syntax and the Natural Semantics inference rules of the semantics of the language. We also provide a benchmark and perform an evaluation using real test bases from W3C with different implementations and approaches comparing, in particular, script interpretation and Java compilation.