Thanks Dave.  Makes sense.   Why though does RDFDatatype says the class
would be Byte and would be Short ?  I guess there is no code that consults
RDFDatatype to ask what they type should be before creating it.   Is this
just an inconsistency in the API?  Or bug in the code?

Thanks,
Tim


On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Dave Reynolds
<[email protected]>wrote:

> On 12/05/14 18:26, Tim Harsch wrote:
>
>> According to the docs:
>> http://jena.apache.org/documentation/notes/typed-literals.html
>>
>> These are all available as static member variables from
>> com.hp.hpl.jena.datatypes.xsd.XSDDatatype<http://jena.
>> apache.org/documentation/javadoc/jena/com/hp/hpl/jena/
>> datatypes/xsd/XSDDatatype.html>
>>
>> .
>>
>> Of these types, the following are registered as the default type to use to
>> represent certain Java classes:
>>    Java class xsd type   Float float  Double double  Integer int  Long
>> long
>> Short short  Byte byte  BigInteger integer  BigDecimal decimal  Boolean
>> Boolean  String string
>>
>> This is what I am seeing for xsd:short and xsd:byte.  I'm puzzled by the
>> type from getValue.
>>
>> CODE:
>>
>> System.out.println( "RDFDatatype: " + literal.getDatatype().toString() );
>> System.out.println( "Datatype URI: " + literal.getDatatypeURI() );
>> System.out.println( "getValue java class: " +
>> ((Literal)literal).getValue().getClass()
>> );
>>
>> OUTPUT:
>>
>> RDFDatatype: Datatype[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#byte -> class
>> java.lang.Byte]
>> Datatype URI: http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#byte
>> getValue java class: class java.lang.Integer
>> RDFDatatype: Datatype[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#short -> class
>> java.lang.Short]
>> Datatype URI: http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#short
>> getValue java class: class java.lang.Integer
>>
>> So, is the expected behavior?
>>
>
> Yes, or at least that's the implemented behaviour and has been for some
> time.
>
> The getValue() code picks a Java datatype big enough for the actual value
> out of Integer, Long and BigInteger.
>
> Arguably it would be better if it round tripped so that a java short would
> become an xsd:short and would return a Short from getValue.
>
> The issue is largely historical. Partly its that the code was developed
> while the RDF datatype handling was still in flux. Partly it's convenience
> - a lot of people use xsd:integer (i.e. arbitrary size) in their RDF
> (because that's what you get in Turtle if you use number syntax) but expect
> them to be Integers in java "unless they are too big". Round-tripping from
> java was never a requirement. Having once implemented it that way we
> created a backward compatibility issue if we wanted to change it.
>
> I suspect that changing so that short and byte round tripped would be OK.
> But equally I suspect that dropping the truncation of smaller BigIntegers
> to Integers would cause problems.
>
> This might be something to revisit in any future Jena 3 though doesn't
> seem like much of a priority - xsd:byte or xsd:short don't seem to be very
> much used in RDF in the wild.
>
> Dave
>
>

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