Re: RDF-star use cases from Amazon Neptune

>> On 12/3/21 6:31 AM, Pierre-Antoine Champin wrote:
>>> In my view, the impedance mismatch 
>>> between RDF and PGs is not due to some arbitrary restriction on the 
>>> RDF model. It is due to the fact that RDF is a logic, that can be 
>>> represented as a graph, while PG is a graph data model, without any 
>>> semantic commitment.

I respectfully but very much disagree.  I see RDF being used to solve 
problems, just like PGs.  And although I like RDF's grounding in 
semantics, I have never seen an RDF application that truly depended on 
that semantic grounding.  Consider this:

  - For an application in which you control all of the data, clearly 
your application does not depend on RDF's semantics, because your 
application could just as well CHOOSE to apply RDF's semantics.

  - And for an application in which you do NOT control all of the data 
-- I'm thinking here primarily of Linked Data applications -- do you 
really think that those applications would not work if the data 
producers had published PGs for you to consume instead of RDF (and your 
application used PGs)?   Personally, I seriously doubt it.

Even with RDF's grounding in a standard semantics, every application 
developer who uses RDF from other sources needs to look carefully at 
that external data in advance to see if its semantics matches the needs 
of the application.  Otherwise the application will likely produce 
garbage output.  In other words, even though RDF itself has a standard 
semantic grounding, that grounding is no get-out-of-jail-free card to 
bypass the need to apply application-specific semantics.

I have always viewed the most significant differences between RDF and 
PGs as being purely practical choices of graph representation.  But 
maybe this is just a difference in perception?

Best wishes,
David Booth

Received on Sunday, 5 December 2021 23:59:11 UTC