Get hands-on experience with SPARQL, the RDF query language that's become a key component of the semantic web. With this concise book, you will learn how to use the latest version of this W3C standard to retrieve and manipulate the increasing amount of public and private data available via SPARQL endpoints. Several open source and commercial tools already support SPARQL, and this introduction gets you started right away. Begin with how to write and run simple SPARQL 1.1 queries, then dive into the language's powerful features and capabilities for manipulating the data you retrieve. Learn what you need to know to add to, update, and delete data in RDF datasets, and give web applications access to this data. Understand SPARQL's connection with RDF, the semantic web, and related specifications Query and combine data from local and remote sources Copy, convert, and create new RDF data Learn how datatype metadata, standardized functions, and extension functions contribute to your queries Incorporate SPARQL queries into web-based applications