/ 
Webservice-InterMine-0.9806
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
/ Webservice::InterMine::Cookbook::Recipe3

NAME

Webservice::InterMine::Cookbook::Recipe3 - More Constraints

SYNOPSIS # Get all papers published by Arnosti, Bhat and Carmena # on Even Skipped in D. Melanogater

use Webservice::InterMine ('www.flymine.org/query');

my $query = Webservice::InterMine->new_query(class => 'Gene');

$query->select('publications.*')->where(
  'Gene'                     => {lookup => 'eve', extra_value => 'D. melanogaster'},
  'publications.firstAuthor' => ['Arnosti DN', 'Bhat VM', 'Carmena A']
)->show();

# Get all genes that interact with Even Skipped and
# are annotated as affecting embryonic development
# or which have not yet been annotated

my $query2 = Webservice::InterMine->new_query(class => 'Gene');

$query2->select('primaryIdentifier', 'symbol', 'ontologyAnnotations.ontologyTerm.name')
       ->where(
          'ontologyAnnotations' => {type => 'GOAnnotation'},        # Type constraints do not get codes
          'ontologyAnnotations.ontologyTerm.name' => undef,         # A
          'ontologyAnnotations.ontologyTerm.name' => '*embryonic*', # B
          'interactions.interactingGenes' => {lookup => 'eve'},     # C
          )
       ->set_logic("(A or B) and C")
       ->show();

DESCRIPTION

There are several different classes of constraints, or filters, that allow you to narrow down the result set. These operations map to the 'where' clauses of SQL queries:

Unary Constraints - constraints which do not take a value

$query->add_constraint(primaryIdentifier => undef);
$query->add_constraint(primaryIdentifier => {isnt => undef});

Any object type (String, Boolean, Integer, Double, Long, Short, BigInt, Date) can be NULL , or absent. Attributes whose data types map to Java primitives (int, short, long, double, boolean - not the case) are always present. In the above example, we test for the absense of an ontologyTerm with the IS NULL operator. The following are equivalent:

$query->add_constraint(primaryIdentifier => undef);
$query->add_constraint(primaryIdentifier => {'!=' => undef});
$query->add_constraint(primaryIdentifier => {isnt => undef});
$query->add_constraint('path' => 'primaryIdentifier', 'op' => 'IS NOT NULL');
$query->add_constraint('primaryIdentifier', 'IS NOT NULL');

The Unary constraints are: IS NULL, IS NOT NULL

Binary Constraints - constraints which take a value

$query->add_constraint(symbol => '*zen*');
$query->add_constraint(path => 'symbol', op => '=', '*zen*');
$query->add_constraint('symbol', '=', '*zen*');

This is the largest group of constraints, and the most familiar. These constraints only operate on attributes, either on strings (text fields) or integers (numbers) or Dates.

The valid operators are:

=, !=, <, >, <=, >=

The following alphabetic forms can be used interchangibly where convenient:

eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge

When used for matching against strings, these operations are always case insensitive.

Additionally, wildcards may be used to indicate basic pattern matching:

$query->add_constraint(name => 'ze*'); # Name starts with 'ze'
$query->add_constraint(name => '*ze'); # Name ends with 'ze'
$query->add_constraint(name => '*ze*'); # Name contains 'ze'

Ternary Constraints - constraints which take one required and one optional value

$query->add_constraint(Gene => {lookup => 'zen', extra_value => 'D. melanogaster'});

There is only one of these at present: LOOKUP. This operates over all the fields on a class, so its path must be a path to a class such as Gene, as in the above examples, where both Gene and Gene.interactions.interactingGenes are paths to Gene objects. LOOKUP is handy because you don't need to remember which specific field a particular piece of information is in; for example eve could be the symbol, or primary identifier, or secondary identifier for the gene we are looking for, but all those fields will be searched, and if one matches then the constraint as a whole will match. LOOKUP is a useful way of determining an object's identity, rather than interrogating a particular field.

Because this can lead to ambiguities, the LOOKUP constraint allows an extra_value, which limits the constraint within a an area appropriate for that type of object (for genes, this is their organism). This is especially useful when constraining genes, one of its main uses, as genes have symbols that frequently share values with genes from different organisms.

Multi Value constraints - constraints that can take more than one value

$query->add_constraint(symbol => [qw/zen h bib eve/]);
$query->add_constraint(symbol => {'none of' => [qw/zen h bib eve/]});
$query->add_constraint('symbol', 'ONE OF', [qw/zen h bib eve/]);
$query->add_constraint(path => 'Gene.symbol', op => 'ONE OF', values => [qw/zen h bib eve/]);

As the name implies, these constraints can have multiple values. There are two of these, ONE OF and NONE OF, and they take a list of values (passed as an array reference). ONE OF demand the value of the attribute be one of the values, while NONE OF requires it be none of them. These constraints are always applied in a case sensitive manner.

List Constraints - constraints that take a list name as a value

$query->add_constraint(Gene => {in => 'some-list'});
$query->add_constraint(Gene => {'not in' => 'some-list'});
$query->add_constraint('Gene', 'IN', 'some-list');
$query->add_constraint(path => 'Gene', op => 'NOT IN', value => 'some-list');

Users of InterMine can set up their own lists of objects and use those lists in queries. To constrain a particular object to be a member of a certain list, the IN and NOT IN constraints can be used. You must have access to this list (see AUTHENTICATION) or the request will fail.

Loop Constraints - Constrain two parts of the query to refer to the same object

# Constrain to genes that interact with themselves.
$query->add_constraint('interactions.interactingGenes' => {is => 'Gene'}); 
$query->add_constraint('interactions.interactingGenes' => $query->path('Gene')}
# Exclude the root object from any results contain in their interactions
$query->add_constraint('interactions.interactingGenes.interactions.interactingGenes' => {isnt => 'Gene'});

This a less commonly used constraint type that allows you to assert that two parts of the query refer (or must not refer) to the same object.

Sub Class constraints - constraints on the type of the path

$query->add_constraint('ontologyAnnotations' => {type => 'GOAnnotation'});

The model that conceptualises the database schema is hierarchical, and reflects the relationships between the different objects in part through inheritance. Sub Class contraints allow you to specify a subclass of a class to constrain a path to. This has two possible uses:

Limit results to only those items of this subclass
Allow other paths to use the fields of the subclass as if they were the parent's

This is particulary important in collections that may contain several subclasses of the one main class.

Subclass constraints do not have codes, and you cannot use them in the logic (ie. they are always active). They also do not have operators, but are called by specifying a type instead. Obviously, this type must be a subclass of the type of the path it constrains.

CONCLUSION

There is a wide variety of different constraint types, which gives Webservice::InterMine queries flexibility and considerable expressive power. Other mechanisms for defining the query are discussed in Recipe4.

AUTHOR

Alex Kalderimis <dev@intermine.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to dev@intermine.org.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Webservice::InterMine

You can also look for information at:

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2006 - 2010 FlyMine, all rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.