Reading the extensive discussion on ISSUE-41, there seem to be three options on how to handle SQL NULLs in the database: A) Do not generate triples for NULLs B) Define a special values such as RDB2RDF:NULL to represent a NULL c) Use a blank node to represent a NULL As Souri pointed out on the call and Juan in mail, option A) does not lose information as long as you have a RDF Schema. Alexandre points out that DM does implicitly define a RDF Schema and I think R2R also, implicitly, defines a RDF Schema. So, I would argue that A) does not lose information. The problem with B) is that it defines a new "value" and the SQL NULL is not really a "value". It has special semantics such as "NULLs cannot be joined with each other." Richard has pointed out other problems with translating NULL to a special value. Re. C) I confess I do not understand bNodes very well. The RDF documents refer to them as existential variables which seems just different from a representation for SQL NULLs. Does this makes sense? Are there other options? -- All the best, AshokReceived on Wednesday, 18 May 2011 13:15:23 GMT
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