Can I use LIMIT to speed up a SPARQL query?

Question

I have a large number of results from a query that users can refine by typing a search term. However, when there are many, many results, I don't need to show all of them.

I notice that when I use LIMIT in my SPARQL query though, the query takes just as long. Is there a way to use LIMIT in an "interrupt" fashion to shorten the processing time?

Thank you.

Answer 1

No, the implementation of LIMIT like any part of the query is up to the underlying query engine.

Some query engines may implement LIMIT in such a way that it will perform quicker than getting all the results but this doesn't necessarily apply to every query (nor to every query engine)

Depending on the framework being used to make queries and process results you may be able to process results in such a way that you only look at the portion of results you care about but that likely doesn't solve your problem.