Bnodes (was: is wasGeneratedBy(e) meaningful?)

On 04/03/2012 01:27, Timothy Lebo wrote:
> STOP promoting bnodes!
> They should _never_ be used in actual systems.

While I recognize some practical concerns with bNodes, I would not go so far as 
to say they should NEVER be used.

I particular, I think bNodes can be very useful in RDF exchange where the 
alternative would be to clutter the RDF content with UUIDs or similar.  The 
original introduction of bNodes by the previous RDF core WG was very much 
motivated by this.  We understood well enough that Skolemization could be used, 
but I remember Dan Connolly, who had more experience than most of actually 
generating and consuming RDF at that time, saying in a F2F that being forced to 
include explicit names for every node would make it harder for him as a 
developer to create RDF.

I think that argument still stands.  I tend to think of a bNode as syntactic 
sugar for "insert unique node identifier here", and as such I think it's useful.

#g
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Received on Sunday, 4 March 2012 08:51:52 UTC