RE: idempotency of triple stores

Hi Mark,
in my humble opinion, writing the same triple multiple times does not change
the state of the triple store. In other words, duplicate triples should not
be stored multiple times (there might be implementations that are flawed in
this sense). Unless it is encapsulated as a reified statement, a triple does
not have an identity of its own.

So if one writes the same triple twice and deletes it once afterwards, the
triple should no longer exist (*).


Martin 

(*) Unless it can also be deduced, e.g. based on an rdfs:subClassOf
relationship. Quite naturally, if you delete an explicit triple, but it is
still stored implicitly, it is still there - but that seems obvious to me.

---------------------------
martin.hepp@deri.org, phone: +43 512 507 6465
http://www.heppnetz.de / http://www.deri.org

-----Original Message-----
From: semantic-web-request@w3.org [mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Mailing Lists
Sent: Donnerstag, 20. Oktober 2005 18:26
To: semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: idempotency of triple stores


Hi,

If I am dumping data into a triple store and my data ends up having
duplicate triples how is a triple store supposed to handle the dupes?

For example, if I try to insert these three triples:

<isbn:0802130208>		<dc:title>		<"A Confederacy of
Dunces">
<isbn:0802130208>		<dc:title>		<"A Confederacy of
Dunces">
<isbn:0802130208>		<dc:title>		<"A Confederacy of
Dunces">

Will I end up with three triples or one in the triplestore?

Is there a specification for how a triple store is supposed to treat this
situation or does each follow its own rule?

Thanks,
Mark

.o0 Mark Donoghue
.o0 http://hdl.handle.net/10.1570/m.donoghue

Received on Thursday, 20 October 2005 16:51:13 UTC