Concept

Suppose you have a linked-data dataset that you've published on the web, and that you'd like to provide your users with the means to run SPARQL queries to explore your data. Most SPARQL end-points allow you to use HTTP get and post commands to send a query and get back results, so it's easy enough to put up an HTML form for your users to type in a query and get back some results. But that's not necessarily that helpful for your users, because:

• in some browsers, hitting the 'back' button after posting a query means that the text input control is emptied. So your users will lose the query that they have typed, which makes iterative development of the query hard.
• you can provide at most one sample query to get your users started with suggestions and ideas.
• you don't have any to manage prefixes, which can make a huge difference to the readability of a query (compare <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment> to rdfs:comment, for example).
• the returned values from a SPARQL form are generally represented as a text format, or using a MIME type (e.g. text/csv that makes your user's computer open the returning file in another program (e.g. a spreadsheet). Plain text can be hard to explore, while opening a different application takes your user's focus away from the task of editing the query and exploring your data.

See a demo of qonsole, using the UK bathing water quality dataset.

Qonsole provides the following features:

• An edit control with SPARQL syntax highlighting, undo, and other familiar code editing features (courtesy of CodeMirror).
• Display of the query and the return result on one page
• A configurable set of example queries your users can select with one click
• A configurable set of pre-declared prefixes, and the ability to add new prefixes dynamically, including looking a well-know prefix up on prefix.cc. Users can add or remove prefix declarations from the edit window with one click.
  • A choice of return formats, including XML, JSON and plain text. XML and JSON results display in a structured editor window for easier browsing. By default, results are returned in a table control, with sortable columns, paging and search.

Qonsole is free open-source software under an Apache license, and was developed by
Epimorphics Ltd.