Using Berlin SPARQL benchmark to evaluate virtual SPARQL endpoints over relational databases

Abstract

The RDF is a popular and well-documented format for publishing structured data on the web. It enables data to be consumed without the knowledge of how the data is internally stored. There are already several native RDF storage solutions that provide a SPARQL endpoint. However, native RDF stores are not widely adopted. It is still more common to store data in a relational database. One of the useful features of native RDF storage solutions is providing a SPARQL endpoint, a web service to query RDF data with SPARQL. To provide this feature also on top of prevalent relational databases, solutions for virtual SPARQL endpoints on top of a relational database have appeared. To benchmark these solutions, a state-of-the-art tool, the Berlin SPARQL Benchmark (BSBM), is used. However, BSBM was designed primarily to benchmark native RDF stores. It can also be used to benchmark solutions for virtual SPARQL endpoints. However, since BSBM was not designed for virtual SPARQL endpoints, each implementation uses that tool differently for evaluation. As a result, the evaluation is not consistent and therefore hardly comparable. In this paper, we demonstrate how this well-defined benchmarking tool for SPARQL endpoints can be used to evaluate virtual endpoints over relational databases, perform the evaluation on the available implementations, and provide instructions on how to repeat the same evaluation in the future.