W3C

– DRAFT –
RDF & SPARQL WG - SPARQL Task Force

25 July 2025

Attendees

Present
AndyS, gtw, james, olaf, TallTed, Tpt
Regrets
pfps
Chair
AndyS
Scribe
olaf

Meeting minutes

<AndyS> open item 1

Scribe?

<TallTed> s/char: AndyS//

<gtw> do we need to open item 2 after closing 1?

Continue discussion: subqueries -- LATERAL-like and parameterization-like behaviours

AndyS: about parameterization, there are some advantages and disadv.
… we need understand them for the road ahead
… in particular the security impact

<TallTed> s|s/char: AndyS//||

james: What are the security risks you have in mind?

AndyS: you outlined the main one, which is whether the query is expressed as intended
… you can get denial of service attacks
… the discussion/assumption on SPARQL-DEV are more about reuse of variables

james: My perspective, I would estimate that half of the queries against our endpoints are views.
… These views have a name, known to the service, become the third name in the URL.
… People who design the queries use ?v variables for matching and $v variables as parameters.
… The service doesn't enforce any constraints on that.

AndyS: Is there some documentation for it?

james: Need to look for it.
… So, no problem with it for us.
… Certainly not on the private / payed endpoints, but also not seen on the public endpoints.

AndyS: Any thoughts on the LATERAL-like option?

james: Those distinctions are a bit confusing for me.
… We support deep bindings, which is a bit like a cross over of the two options.

AndyS: Jena renames apart of hidden variables.
… The execution then is projection sensitive.

james: If they are renamed, they are not usable as user parameters

AndyS: Another possible expectation is that the values given for the parameters also come out.

james: We provide additional BINDs for this.

Tpt: Yes, I have parameterization, which uses the same as EXIST.
… We may have a propagation mechanism for EXISTS and LATERAL.
… which would be a syntactic replacement, everywhere.
… We may have a new syntax for this, such that the processor fails with an error if not all parameters are substituted.

AndyS: So, you have an early fail.

Tpt: Yes, like in SQL.

Strawpoll

james: General question: in what form are we going to communicate our conclusions to the WG?

AndyS: write up in a PR

james: So, we need to get to a point where we have consensus on a PR.

AndyS: Yes, but that PR may also include issue notes.
… where these notes may discuss the pros and cons of different options.
… and this may even go into CR
… to provoke reactions
… Another constraint is that we are short on time.
… because we need to bring the other docs to CR

TallTed: most important part is that we are not making decisions here
… we are doing research and get back to the WG with our findings

AndyS: I can take another stab at the PR.
… to distribute the bits and pieces into the relevant pars of the spec
… needs to be coordinated with olaf's work

olaf: I will be on vacation the next two weeks.

AndyS: We may as well cancel for the next few weeks.
… I will let pfps know what happened / what the idea is

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

Succeeded: s/char: AndyS//

Failed: s/char: AndyS//

Failed: s|s/char: AndyS//||

Succeeded: s/issues/risks

Succeeded: s/the part/apart/

All speakers: AndyS, james, olaf, TallTed, Tpt

Active on IRC: AndyS, gtw, james, olaf, TallTed, Tpt