Re: A few thoughts on RDF-star, Reification, and Labeled Property Graphs

Phil,

Indeed.

I have a really hard time explaining this to people, one of the reasons for my (and my team’s) reluctance to accept the current proposal. Apart from questions of expressivity (presented as a benefit of the current proposal) and constraints the opposing “only one triple per reifier” -approach introduces (erroneously presented as “something RDF has not done before”), our ability to explain RDF to folks who are less acquainted with it is paramount. We now have a quarter century fighting against the “but RDF is so complicated” -crowd, and I absolutely would not want to make this task any harder.

I am yet to see a use case that would convince me that we should implement the current proposal. On the other hand, achieving closer alignment with Labeled Property Graphs benefits the broader graph community, and would in part assure that RDF stays relevant.

Ora

--
Dr. Ora Lassila
Principal Technologist, Amazon Neptune



From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>
Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 5:22 AM
To: "public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org" <public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] A few thoughts on RDF-star, Reification, and Labeled Property Graphs
Resent-From: <public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 5:22 AM


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Hello all. I just lurk on this list, hoping to learn enough to use RDF-start/RDF1.2 when it is published and this is something I have been wondering about:
On 16/04/2024 17:07, Thompson, Bryan wrote:
But this same reifier, multiple triples design would allow multiple link types.  It is in fact closer to named graphs, which are also just bundles of triples.

I'm aware of the long "we don't need RDF-star, just use named gaphs /  rdf:Statement from RDF1.1" discussions and don't mean to revisit that, but I have wondered since it first came up, what is the difference between using same reifier for multiple triples of different types (as it was first introduced) and a named graph?

Phil
--

Phil Barker<http://people.pjjk.net/phil>, http://people.pjjk.net/phil (he/him).
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