Logical Conditions in SPARQL - OR, AND, and DIFFERENCE

Kedar

Concept Overview

In SPARQL, logical combinations (OR, AND, DIFFERENCE) aren’t special operators — they’re implemented through query structure.

Logic	Typical Use Case	SPARQL Technique
OR	Include entities matching any attribute	VALUES or UNION
AND	Require all attributes to be present	Subquery + HAVING(COUNT(...))
DIFFERENCE	Include some, exclude others	Combine AND + FILTER NOT EXISTS

🧩 All examples on this page use the sample movie dataset introduced in SPARQL in AGS – Developer’s Overview

OR Logic - “Include any of these attributes”

Goal: Retrieve movies that belong to Drama OR Action genres.

PREFIX ex: <http://example.org/movie/>


SELECT ?title ?genre

WHERE {

  ?m a ex:Movie ;

     ex:title ?title ;

     ex:genre ?genre .

  VALUES ?genre { "Drama" "Action" }

}

ORDER BY ?title

Output:

Title	Genre
The Dark Knight	Action
The Shawshank Redemption	Drama

Why it works:

The VALUES clause binds multiple acceptable values to a variable. SPARQL evaluates the query once per binding — effectively performing OR logic without needing FILTER(?g="A" || ?g="B")

AND Logic - “Require all of these attributes”

Goal: Find movies that are tagged with both Drama and Crime genres. (Our dataset doesn’t have one that matches both, so you can test with modified data.)

PREFIX ex: <http://example.org/movie/>


SELECT ?title

WHERE {

  {

    SELECT ?m (COUNT(DISTINCT ?genre) AS ?genreCount)

    WHERE {

      ?m a ex:Movie ; ex:genre ?genre .

      FILTER(?genre IN ("Drama","Crime"))

    }

    GROUP BY ?m

    HAVING(?genreCount = 2)  # must have both genres

  }

  ?m ex:title ?title .

}

Result (on current dataset):
(Empty result set — none of our 5 movies are both Drama and Crime) If you add a movie tagged as both, it will appear here.

Why it works:
The subquery groups by subject (?m) and counts how many target genres it has.
The HAVING clause enforces that all required ones are present — true AND logic.

DIFFERENCE Logic - “Include some, exclude others”

Goal: Return movies that are Crime or Drama but not Action.

PREFIX ex: <http://example.org/movie/>


SELECT ?title ?genre

WHERE {

  ?m a ex:Movie ;

     ex:title ?title ;

     ex:genre ?genre .

  FILTER(?genre IN ("Drama","Crime"))

  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?m ex:genre "Action" }

}

ORDER BY ?title

Output:

Title	Genre
The Shawshank Redemption	Drama
The Godfather	Crime
Pulp Fiction	Crime

Why it works:

• The first FILTER includes any movie that’s Drama or Crime.
• The FILTER NOT EXISTS excludes any that also have the “Action” genre.

This creates a set difference (Include − Exclude).