LSQ 2.0: A linked dataset of SPARQL query logs

1. Introduction

Since its initial recommendation in 2008 [70], the SPARQL query language for RDF has received considerable adoption, where it is used on hundreds of public query endpoints accessible over the Web [93]. The most prominent of these endpoints receive millions of queries per month [12], or even per day [57]. There is much to be learnt from queries received by such endpoints, where research on SPARQL would benefit – and has already benefited – from access to real-world queries to help focus both applied and theoretical research on commonly seen forms of queries [59].

To exemplify how access to real-world queries can directly benefit research on SPARQL, first consider the complexity results of SPARQL [67], which show that evaluation of SPARQL queries is intractable (PSPACE-hard). But do the worst cases predicted in theory actually occur in practice? Is it possible to define fragments of the language that avoid computationally difficult cases and lead the way to efficient algorithms dedicated to these common cases? The answer is yes, where a number of restricted fragments of SPARQL queries have been identified that are less computationally costly for important tasks. These fragments include well-designed queries that use the OPTIONAL clause in restricted ways [21,67], queries with low treewidth [21] whose structure is close to that of a tree, queries such as simple transitive expressions [58] or (certain fragments of) simple conjunctive regular path queries [36] where only restricted use of Kleene star (*) is allowed in path expressions, certain types of simple conjunctive regular path queries where disjunction (|) is not allowed inside Kleene star, and threshold queries that limit the number of results returned [20]. Studies of SPARQL query logs have shown that these fragments cover many of the queries seen in practice [24,58], where query logs help to bridge the theory and practice of SPARQL [59].

Another use case for a large collection of real-world queries pertains to benchmarking. For over a decade, the SPARQL community has relied on synthetic datasets and queries (e.g., LUBM [40], Berlin [19]), or real-world datasets and hand-crafted queries (e.g., BTC [63], FedBench [84]) to perform benchmarking. However, Aluç et al. [7] and Saleem et al. [83] find the queries of these benchmarks to often be too narrow and simplistic. Building benchmarks from real-world queries can help tune implementations and guide research towards better support for the types of queries most commonly encountered in practical settings [13,16,62,65,79,101]. Yet another use case is caching [50,54,100]. Here, real-world queries can be used to simulate practical workloads experienced by endpoints. The usability of SPARQL interfaces [24,25,52,73] can also benefit from query logs, as these logs can reveal patterns in how users incrementally build their queries, as has recently been studied by Bonifati et al. [24] in DBpedia logs. These use cases and others will be discussed in more detail in Section 2.

Recognising the value of query logs, a number of such collections have been published previously, including contributions from USEWOD [55],1

In this dataset description paper, we extend upon our previous work [77], which reported on the initial release of the Linked SPARQL Query Dataset (LSQ). The goal of LSQ is to publish queries from a variety of SPARQL logs in a consistent format and associate these queries with rich metadata, including both static metadata (i.e., considering only the query) and runtime metadata (i.e., considering the query and the dataset). In particular, we propose an RDF representation of queries that captures their source, structure, static metadata and runtime metadata. These RDF descriptions of queries are indexed in a SPARQL endpoint. Thus, they allow clients to retrieve the queries of interest to their use case declaratively, potentially sourced from several endpoints at once. In comparison to our previous work [77], which described the initial release of the dataset in 2015:

LSQ 2.0 is available at http://aksw.github.io/LSQ/.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows:

Section 2 describes use cases envisaged for LSQ.

To help motivate the Linked SPARQL Queries dataset, we first discuss some potential use cases that we envisage. We then list some general requirements for LSQ that arise from these use cases.

These six use cases are intended to help motivate the dataset, to give ideas of potential applications, and also to help distil some key requirements for the design of the dataset. The list should not be considered complete, as other use cases will naturally arise in future. We identify the following facets of the dataset as relevant to support the aforementioned six use cases.

These facets guide the design of the LSQ dataset in terms of what is included, and how the descriptions of individual queries are represented in RDF.

3. Data model & vocabulary

In this section, we describe the data model and vocabulary employed by LSQ for describing SPARQL queries. First, we identify a number of desiderata:

It is important to note that some of these desiderata are incompatible. For example, D2 is in direct conflict with D1 as adding more meta-data for queries can increase generality, but decreases conciseness. D2 can also be seen as being in conflict with D3 and D4, as D3 can be achieved by adding “shortcut” representations for common needs, while D4 requires the addition of links to external datasets, both of which reduce conciseness. Consequently, the data model must find a balance between providing a detailed description of each query, being useful for various purposes, and keeping the overall dataset relatively concise and manageable.

In Fig. 1 we provide an overview of the model used to represent queries in RDF, while in Listing 1 we provide a snippet of the top-level data generated for a query found in the SWDF logs.3

Query instance We define a “query” to be uniquely identified by the syntactic query string (independently of the endpoint, the particular execution, etc.). We type these queries with lsqv:Query. Instances of this class are linked to the query string using lsqv:text, and to various instances of local and remote executions. Other links are provided to other resources that capture further details of the static features of the query, its structure, as well as runtime statistics of its local execution (on our server) as information about its remote execution (on the original server).

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Listing 1.

An example LSQ/RDF representation of a SPARQL query in Turtle syntax

Static features Next we define some static features of the query, independent of the dataset over which it is evaluated. These include links to its individual join variables, triple patterns, and basic graph patterns; the SPARQL features that is uses; its number of projected variables, basic graph patterns, join variables, triple patterns; the maximum, mean and median degree of its join variables; and the maximum and minimum size of its basic graph patterns. The triple patterns and basic graph patterns themselves link to the SPIN representation of the query included in the description (and discussed presently); the triple patterns, in turn, link to the resources used by the query. The join variables, on the other hand, are described separately, indicating the degree of the variable and type of join [81] it induces.

SPIN representation While the static features aim to capture some high-level descriptions of the query that may be of interest to specific use cases, some details may be missing. In the interest of generality, we also include for each query a SPARQL Inferencing Notation (SPIN) [48] representation of the query, which essentially captures a fine-grained translation of the SPARQL query to RDF. This SPIN encoding can be translated back to a SPARQL query equivalent to the original.4

Remote execution(s) Next, individual queries are associated with one or more executions on the original endpoint, including a timestamp of when the query was executed, as well as an anonymised ID for the client – based on their cryptographically-hashed and salted I.P. – to identify which queries are run by the same agent.5

Local execution In most cases, the log of the remote executions will not provide statistics about the execution of the query in terms of how many results were returned, how long it took, how selective were the individual patterns, and so forth. Hence we re-execute the queries offline against the original dataset to generate runtime statistics about the query. Local executions were run on a machine with 64 core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2683 v4 @ 2.10 GHz, and 528 GB RAM running Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS using Virtuoso 7.2.7

Summary The meta-data described in this section aim to strike a balance in terms of the four desiderata mentioned previously. In terms of Generality, we provide detailed meta-data for static query features, for provenance, and for runtime query statistics. In terms of Conciseness, though the detailed meta-data do require potentially many triples to be encoded for each query, we take steps to reduce this number by re-using resources insofar as appropriate where, for example, each unique query string is encoded once per log, with one set of static features, one SPIN representation, and one set of local executions, being subsequently linked to its different remote executions (rather than duplicate the former meta-data each time the same query string appears in the log). In terms of Usability, we provide some “shortcut triples” that allow for quickly finding queries of interest; for example, the static features of the query are largely of this form, where all such meta-data could in principle be computed from the SPIN representation, but using rather complex SPARQL queries over LSQ; the static query features are thus presented to make it easier to find queries, for example, with a certain range of numbers of triple patterns, or queries using DISTINCT and GROUP BY, etc. We will discuss Linked Data Compatibility in the section that follows.

The LSQ dataset is published as Linked Data. Before describing the current contents of LSQ, we discuss in more detail how LSQ has been published.

Access methods We provide a number of ways to access LSQ. Firstly, following Linked Data principles, all IRIs under the lsqr: namespace are made dereferenceable using a 303 Redirect; this is implemented with LodView9

Vocabulary As seen in Fig. 1, we use a mixture of a custom vocabulary in the lsqv: namespace, as well as existing vocabulary where possible. The custom LSQ vocabulary dereferences (via 303 Redirect) to an RDFS/OWL definition of the corresponding terms in Turtle, which includes metadata about authors. The vocabulary meets four of the five stars of Linked Data vocabulary use [46].10

Discoverability The LSQ dataset has been registered in the DataHub catalogue, while the LSQ vocabulary has been listed on Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) [92] as well as prefix.cc. We provide these locations in Table 1. We also compute and publish meta-data about the LSQ dataset using the Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID) [5]. More specifically, we compute a separate VoID description for each log and make the resulting description accessible via both a downloadable file and a named graph of the SPARQL endpoint.

Availability The LSQ dataset has been hosted for over six years (at the time of writing) by the Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (AKSW) group. As discussed in Section 7, it has been widely adopted in that time. The dataset is available to all under a CC-BY license. We further make the source code used for generating the LSQ dataset from the raw query logs available on Github https://github.com/AKSW/LSQ.

We now describe the content of the LSQ 2.0 dataset. In order to collect raw SPARQL query logs, we sent mails both to the public-lod@w3.org mailing list and to individual providers of endpoints. We also incorporated logs from LSQ 1.0 [77] and a sample of queries from the Wikidata logs [57]. We thus acquired access to the logs of 27 endpoints, 22 of which are part of Bio2RDF release 3 [33].11

We now look in more detail at the composition of the queries currently included in the LSQ dataset. In particular, we first look at some high-level statistics for queries in the dataset, before looking at the static features of the query, the agents making the queries, as well as runtime statistics computed against the corresponding dataset. Finally we discuss the composition of the LSQ dataset itself.

High-level statistics Table 2 provides a high-level analysis of the queries (both query executions and unique queries) appearing in each of the logs considered. From the overall row, we see that LSQ contains 43.95 million query executions and 11.56 million unique queries, implying that each query is executed, on average, 3.8 times within each log. Of the unique queries, 7.7 million (66.9%) have runtime errors; and 2.3 million (20.0%) have no errors but return empty results. A high ratio of runtime errors come from the Bio2RDF logs. The majority of queries are CONSTRUCT queries (60.0%), followed by SELECT (32.3%), DESCRIBE (7.1%) and ASK (0.5%). We find that CONSTRUCT queries are particularly prevalent on Bio2RDF endpoints, while DESCRIBE queries are particularly prevalent on DBpedia and Wikdata endpoints, possibly due to the use of such queries for dereferencing Linked Data IRIs through the endpoint.

Static features Turning to static features, we first look at the percentages of unique queries without parse errors using different SPARQL features (note that we will analyse joins in BGPs and property paths later). Table 3 provides statistics for the usage of different features of SPARQL. We see that FILTER is among the most widely used features, along with SPARQL functions and expressions (note that almost all filters use such expressions). This feature is followed by DISTINCT and other solution modifiers, UNION, OPTIONAL, etc. Notably these are all SPARQL 1.0 features. The SERVICE keyword is commonly used on Wikidata since the Wikidata Query Service provides a custom service for retrieving multilingual labels as preferred/available.

Next, in Table 4, we provide three types of statistics about the basic graph patterns and property path features used. First, we present the unique number of subject, predicate and object terms used in the BGPs of the logs in order to characterise their diversity. We see that DBpedia, LinkedGeoData and Wikidata offer the most diversity, particularly in terms of predicates found in the queries. Second, we present the percentage of queries with different types of joins in the basic graph patterns [81]. Each join variable in a basic graph pattern is analysed in order to understand how they connect triple patterns. We say that a join vertex has an “outgoing link” if it appears as a subject of a triple pattern, and that it has an “incoming link” if it appears as predicate or object. The join types are then defined as follows: Star

has multiple outgoing but no incoming links.

These statistics may be helpful for consumers to choose which dataset/log to work with. For example, for the purposes of benchmarking joins, a dataset such as LinkedGeoData or Wikidata may be chosen as most queries feature joins; in order to benchmark or analyse property paths, DBpedia or Wikidata may be chosen as they use this feature more frequently; etc.

Provenance: Executions and agents Next we look at how many clients (anonymised IPs) and unique queries underlie the executions registered in order to compare the diversity of the different datasets. Note that client information is not available for Wikidata. In Fig. 2(a) and Fig. 2(b), we present Lorenz curves for the number of executions per client and per query, respectively.13

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Fig. 2.

Lorenz curves for the LSQ dataset

Static and runtime statistics Next, in order to characterise how complex the queries are to evaluate, in Table 5 we present some relevant static and runtime statistics, where static statistics can be computed from the query string, while runtime statistics require evaluating the query locally (only queries that were successfully run are counted; see Table 2 for statistics on runtime errors). Regarding runtimes, we recall that these were run with a one minute timeout, which represents the max runtime. We see that LinkedGeoData contains the most costly queries to run, which appears to correlate with larger result sizes and a larger mean join-vertex degree. Relatively high runtimes are also seen for the KEGG dataset. The simplest queries to run are found in the GenAge, GenDR and Taxonomy datasets. These results suggest, for example, that LinkedGeoData might be more suitable for consumers looking for a challenging benchmark.

LSQ dataset statistics The LSQ 2.0 dataset, describing 43.95 million executions of 11.56 million unique queries, contains 1.24 billion triples, split into 27 named graphs (one for each of the datasets listed).14

In this section we present how LSQ has been adopted since its initial release with four logs in 2015. We organise this discussion following the motivational use cases we originally envisaged, as presented in Section 2. Table 6 provides an overview of the research works that have used LSQ, and the relevant use case(s) that they target. We now discuss these works in more detail; note that in the case of works that relate to multiple use cases, we will discuss them once in what we identify to be the “primary” related use case. We further discuss some works that have used the LSQ dataset for use cases beyond the six we had originally envisaged.

UC1: Custom Benchmarks LSQ has been adopted in various works for creating custom benchmarks.

UC2: SPARQL adoption Other works have used LSQ to understand how SPARQL is being used in practice.

UC3: Caching LSQ can also be used to simulate real workloads for systems that explore caching techniques.

UC4: Usability LSQ also has applications for improving the usability of SPARQL endpoints.

UC5: Optimisation The LSQ dataset can also be used to identify and study fragments that are commonly used in practice and can be evaluated efficiently using dedicated algorithms.

UC6: Meta-querying A handful of works have also used LSQ in the context of meta-querying, where queries are found based on the resources they contain.

Other use cases A number of works have used LSQ (mostly for evaluation) in contexts that were not originally anticipated by the aforementioned use cases.

Discussion Per Table 6, we see that the original version of LSQ has been used in a wide variety of research works for a variety of purposes. Complementing other SPARQL query logs such as Wikidata’s [57], we believe that LSQ 2.0, with its extended set of queries, will likewise serve as a useful resource to help align the theory and practice of SPARQL research.

In this paper, we have described the Linked SPARQL Queries v.2 (LSQ 2.0) dataset, which represents queries in logs as RDF, allowing clients to quickly find real-world queries that may be of interest to them. We have described a number of use cases for LSQ, including the generation of custom benchmarks, the analysis of how SPARQL is used in practice, the evaluation of caching systems, the exploration of techniques to improve the usability of SPARQL services, the targeted optimisation of queries with characteristics commonly found in real workloads, as well as the ability to find queries relating to specific resources. We then described the model and vocabulary used to represent LSQ, including static features of queries, a SPIN representation, provenance encoding the agents and endpoints from which the query originate, as well as runtime statistics generated through local executions of the queries against their corresponding dataset. We then discussed how LSQ is published, thereafter describing the datasets and queries featured in the current version of LSQ. Finally we discussed how LSQ has been used for research purposes since its initial release in 2015.

As discussed in Section 7, since its initial release, LSQ has been adopted by a variety of research works for a variety of purposes. In terms of future directions, we will look to continue adding further logs with further queries to the dataset. Looking at how LSQ has been adopted in the literature has also revealed ways in which the metadata for LSQ could be extended in a future version, such as to add information about monotonicity and satisfiability [41], or information about (hyper)treewidth [21,22], for example. It may also be useful to provide a canonical version of the query string [76]; this could perhaps be leveraged, for example, when evaluating caching methods. Another useful feature would be to add questions in natural language that verbalise each query, which could be used, for example, in order to create datasets for training and testing question answering systems, as well as enabling users to find relevant queries through keyword search; given the large number of queries in the dataset, an automated approach may be applicable [64].

As discussed by Martens and Trautner [59], query logs allow to bridge the theory and practice of SPARQL. They serve an important role, ensuring that the research conducted by the community is guided by the requirements and trends that emerge in practice. We thus believe that LSQ (2.0) will continue to serve an important role in SPARQL research in the coming years.