SPARQL - AND & OR Filters on Literal

Question

I am trying to understand how to do filtering in SPARQL with combined AND and OR conditions.

I try to find all physicists living within Newton's lifetime via the Wikidata Query Service (query.wikidata.org). This is my query:

SELECT ?p1 ?p1Label ?p1t1 ?p1t2 ?p2 ?p2Label ?p2t1 ?p2t2
WHERE {
  FILTER (?p1=wd:Q935) .    # Newton
  ?p1 wdt:P569 ?p1t1 .      # date of birth
  ?p1 wdt:P570 ?p1t2 .      # date of death
  ?p2 wdt:P106 wd:Q169470 . # physicist
  ?p2 wdt:P569 ?p2t1 .      # date of birth
  ?p2 wdt:P570 ?p2t2 .      # date of death
  { FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t1) > xsd:dateTime(?p1t1))
  . FILTER  (xsd:dateTime(?p2t1) < xsd:dateTime(?p1t2)) }
  UNION
  { FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t2) > xsd:dateTime(?p1t1))
  . FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t2) < xsd:dateTime(?p1t2)) }
  UNION
  { FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t1) < xsd:dateTime(?p1t1))
  . FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t2) > xsd:dateTime(?p1t2)) } .
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" }
}
ORDER BY xsd:dateTime(?p2t1)

The query can be processed but does not yield any results.

Each one of the three { FILTER . FILTER } blocks works fine when used without the others.

What am I doing wrong?

You can do `filter (condition1 || ... || conditionn)`. Is that what you're looking for? — Joshua Taylor, Mar 19 '16 at 17:13
If I use || instead of UNION I get errors. I tried different bracket combinations but none of them worked. — Paul Milde, Mar 20 '16 at 10:22
Could you provide the correct query that will be parsed by query.wikidata.org? Thanks. — Paul Milde, Mar 20 '16 at 10:35
I didn't suggest using || in the same page that Union is. Replace `{... filter (test1) } Union { ... filter (test2) }` with `filter (test1 || test2)`. — Joshua Taylor, Mar 20 '16 at 12:16

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '16 at 21:06

4

{ FILTER (xsd:dateTime(?p2t1) > xsd:dateTime(?p1t1))
  . FILTER  (xsd:dateTime(?p2t1) < xsd:dateTime(?p1t2)) }

evaluates to empty.

UNION does not "or" them together -- || does that.

Each branch of the UNION is a separate graph pattern.

answered Mar 19 '16 at 21:06

AndyS

16,345
17
21

SPARQL - AND & OR Filters on Literal

1 Answers1