[TripleStore] Re: SWAD-Europe Report: Mapping Semantic Web Data with RDBMSes

[Jean-Michel Hiver]

> > I am yet to be convinced by RDF... To me it seems like an overly
> > complicated syntax to represent a simple concept. So I don't think I'll
> > mess with generating or parsing RDF, and if I'll do it will be in a
> > different module.
> 
> Sigh.  The usual confusion.  Stop looking at the angle brackets.  RDF
> is not it's XML syntax.  It is triples.  Here:

Sorry, I - maybe wrongly - thought that RDF = RDF model + RDF syntax [1]

All I was saying is that at the moment TripleStore manages purely
triples, i.e.  (subject, object, predicate), it doesn't (yet ?) have
support for RDF specific concepts such as namespaces.

For example, in my limited understanding of RDF, an identifier is
necessarily a URI. TripleStore doesn't enforce that.

If you have the Perl structure:

  my $hash = {
    address => {
      street => '1501 Grant Avenue',
      state  => 'Massachusets',
      city   => 'Bedford',
      zip    => '01730',
    }
  };

You can insert:

  $store->insert ('_id:1', 'address', '_id:2');
  $store->insert ('_id:2', 'street', '1501 Grant Avenue');
  $store->insert ('_id:2', 'state', 'Massachusets');
  $store->insert ('_id:2', 'city', 'Bedford');
  $store->insert ('_id:2', 'zip', '01730');

Instead of

  $store->insert ('http://www.example.org/staffId85740', 'address', '_someAnonyMousID');
  $store->insert ('_someAnonyMousID', 'http://www.example.org/terms/street', '1501 Grant Avenue');
  $store->insert ('_someAnonyMousID', 'http://www.example.org/terms/state', 'Massachusets');
  $store->insert ('_someAnonyMousID', 'http://www.example.org/terms/city', 'Bedford');
  $store->insert ('_someAnonyMousID', 'http://www.example.org/terms/zip', '01730');

I understand that you loose the shared vocabulary though...

And that is because as a Perl programmer I can easily comprehend and map
the concept of Perl hashes and Perl arrays to a set of triples, and use
it as a very flexible storage mechanism.

Now, am I missing anything essential? If possible I'd like TripleStore
to be useful for more people than just me :)

Best Regards,


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-rdf-concepts-20030123/#section-data-model

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Jean-Michel Hiver
jhiver at mkdoc.com  - +44 (0)114 255 8097
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