The Complexity of Evaluating Path Expressions in SPARQL
Summary: Formalizes W3C SPARQL1.1 property‑path semantics (limited negation, numerical occurrence sugar, nonstandard graph semantics) and frames decision/counting of path matches between nodes in edge‑labeled graphs. Shows W3C semantics makes existence and counting queries intractable for very small expression fragments (contrasting with a polytime alternative semantics), while membership for regular expressions with negation and numerical occurrence indicators is in P. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Katja Losemann (University of Bayreuth)
- 2. Wim Martens (University of Bayreuth)
BibTeX Citation
@inproceedings{losemann_pods12,
address = {New York, NY, USA},
series = {{PODS} '12},
title = {{The Complexity of Evaluating Path Expressions in SPARQL}},
url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2213556.2213573},
doi = {10.1145/2213556.2213573},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
author = {Losemann, Katja and Martens, Wim},
year = {2012}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 719 | Querying Graph Databases | 2013 | PODS | 0.00014529156 |
| 3,420 | Query Planning for Evaluating SPARQL Property Paths | 2016 | SIGMOD | 7.3147525e-05 |
| 5,109 | A Trichotomy for Regular Simple Path Queries on Graphs | 2013 | PODS | 6.2695208e-05 |
| 7,551 | TriAL for RDF: Adapting Graph Query Languages for RDF Data | 2013 | PODS | 5.4980866e-05 |
| 8,270 | Designing a Query Language for RDF: Marrying Open and Closed Worlds | 2016 | PODS | 5.364379e-05 |
| 11,238 | PlanRGCN: Predicting SPARQL Query Performance | 2025 | VLDB | 4.9793485e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 8 of 8 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 130 | A Query Language and Optimization Techniques for Unstructured Data | 1996 | SIGMOD | 0.00030320165 |
| 297 | GraphLog: a Visual Formalism for Real Life Recursion | 1990 | PODS | 0.00021840374 |
| 305 | A Graphical Query Language Supporting Recursion | 1987 | SIGMOD | 0.0002159111 |
| 356 | Regular Path Queries with Constraints | 1997 | PODS | 0.00020103855 |
| 699 | Query Containment for Conjunctive Queries With Regular Expressions | 1998 | PODS | 0.00014686953 |
| 2,483 | Querying Semantic Web Data with SPARQL | 2011 | PODS | 8.3997473e-05 |
| 3,020 | Graph-Theoretic Methods In Database Theory | 1990 | PODS | 7.7448163e-05 |
| 3,155 | View-Based Query Processing for Regular Path Queries with Inverse | 2000 | PODS | 7.5858519e-05 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7,437 | Conjunctive Regular Path Queries with String Variables | 2020 | PODS |
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| 5 | 5,109 | A Trichotomy for Regular Simple Path Queries on Graphs | 2013 | PODS |
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| 7 | 11,561 | Efficient Regular Simple Path Queries under Transitive Restricted Expressions | 2024 | VLDB |
| 8 | 1,597 | Finding Regular Simple Paths in Graph Databases | 1989 | VLDB |
| 9 | 3,420 | Query Planning for Evaluating SPARQL Property Paths | 2016 | SIGMOD |
| 10 | 1,468 | Expressive Languages for Path Queries over Graph-Structured Data | 2010 | PODS |