ARQ - SPARQL Update

SPARQL Update is a W3C standard for an RDF update language with SPARQL syntax. It is described in “SPARQL 1.1 Update”.

A SPARQL Update request is composed of a number of update operations, so in a single request graphs can be created, loaded with RDF data and modified.

Some examples of ARQ’s SPARQL Update support are to be found in the download in jena-examples:arq/examples/update.

The main API classes are:

  • UpdateRequest - A list of Update to be performed.
  • UpdateFactory - Create UpdateRequest objects by parsing strings or parsing the contents of a file.
  • UpdateAction - execute updates

To execute a SPARQL Update request as a script from a file:

Dataset dataset = ...
UpdateAction.readExecute("update.ru", dataset) ;

To execute a SPARQL Update request as a string:

Dataset dataset = ...
UpdateAction.parseExecute("DROP ALL", dataset) ;

The application writer can create and execute operations:

UpdateRequest request = UpdateFactory.create() ;
request.add("DROP ALL")
       .add("CREATE GRAPH <http://example/g2>")
       .add("LOAD <file:etc/update-data.ttl> INTO <http://example/g2>") ;

// And perform the operations.
UpdateAction.execute(request, dataset) ;

but be aware that each operation added needs to be a complete SPARQL Update operation, including prefixes if needed.

ARQ documentation index