SPARQL: Given a dbpedia url, how can I determine if the entity is a person?

Question

If I have a dbpedia url (i.e., http://dbpedia.org/page/Abraham_Lincoln), how can I query SPARQL to verify if the entity (in this case Abraham Lincoln) is a person? It occurred to me that I could return all the rdf:type values and then check to see if foaf:Person or dbo:Person are in the output, but it would be more convenient to just get a true/false response.

Rivas

Answer 1

Use a SPARQL ASK query? This answer should have been found by yourself when looking into the W3C recommendation

ASK { ?s rdf:type <SOME_CLASS_URI> }

Note, it allows for more complex query pattern of course:

ASK {
   { ?s rdf:type foaf:Person }
  UNION 
   { ?s rdf:type dbo:Person }
}

Vaca

Or ASK { values ?person { foaf:Person dbo:Person } ?s a ?person }. (I just like using values instead of UNION, since it scales more easily, and makes the logic a bit clearer. – Ilowell

According to AKSW this question is "too obvious" to even ask, so if there aren't any objections, I'll delete it. – Rivas

Well it could have been found yes but many people never heard of anything else than SELECT queries so there might be some reason to keep it. – Obsecrate

Quite. There is nothing obvious about this to someone who is just starting with SPARQL. More real world examples are generally useful IMHO. – Benevento