Using SPARQL – The Practitioners’ Viewpoint

A number of studies have analyzed SPARQL log data to draw conclusions about how SPARQL is being used. To complement this work, a survey of SPARQL users has been undertaken. Whilst confirming some of the conclusions of the previous studies, the current work is able to provide additional insight into how users create SPARQL queries, the difficulties they encounter, and the features they would like to see included in the language. Based on this insight, a number of recommendations are presented to the community. These relate to predicting and avoiding computationally expensive queries; extensions to the language; and extending the search paradigm.