SPARQL: Delete instance and all of its properties

I have a question about the deletion of elements from a triplestore (in my case a Virtuoso) using SPARQL. I have stored the following elements in a graph:

@prefix xy: <http://purl.oclc.org/xy/xy#> .
@prefix ssn: <http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/ssn#> .

<point> a xy:Point ;
    xy:value "10" ;
    ssn:observationResultTime <Rs_b8d4ae44-6083-4140-b4e3-11fcf38a53c8> ;
    ssn:observationSamplingTime <St_b8d4ae44-6083-4140-b4e3-11fcf38a53c8> ;
    ssn:observedBy <SensorID-b8d4ae44-6083-4140-b4e3-11fcf38a53c8> .

As you can see I have one xy:Point, which has some properties. In my database I have stored dozens of these points. Now my question: How to delete one point and all of its properties (even the possibly linked subproperties of observationSamplingTime, observationResultTime)? Is there any simple solution? By now I am deleting the point and its properties by giving all exact relations like:

@prefix xy: <http://purl.oclc.org/xy/xy#> .
@prefix ssn: <http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/ssn#> 

delete {
   ?observation a xy:Point .
   ?observation xy:value ?value .
   ?observation ssn:observationResultTime ?resultTime .
   ?observation ssn:observationSamplingTime ?samplingTime .
   ?observation ssn:observedBy ?sensor .
}
WHERE {
   ?observation xy:value ?value .
   ?observation ssn:observationResultTime ?resultTime .
   ?observation ssn:observationSamplingTime ?samplingTime .
   ?observation ssn:observedBy ?sensor .
}

What I would like to do is "Delete ?observation a xy:Point and all ob its subproperties". Is there any possibility to do that?

Thanks and kind regards

tanktoo

(even the possibly linked subproperties of observationSamplingTime, observationResultTime)?

Note that something like this pretty dangerous, since you might delete from triples from a context that you're not expecting to. E.g., suppose you had something like

:pointX :hasTime :time1 ;
        :hasValue :valueX .

:pointY :hasTime :time1 ;
        :hasValue :valueY .

:time1 :hasLabel "time1" .

If you "delete" :pointX, and recursively delete :time1, then you lose information that was important for :pointY as well. Remember that a triple store stores sets of triples. Things only exist by virtue of being a subject, predicate, or object.

At any rate, what you're trying to do isn't too hard. You can just do:

delete { ?s ?p ?o }
where {
  :thing (<>|!<>)* ?s . 
  ?s ?p ?o .
}

(<>|!<>)* is a wildcard path, so ?s gets bound to anything reachable from :thing, including :thing itself. ?p and ?o are just the property and object of ?s. For more information about the wildcard, see SPARQL: is there any path between two nodes?.