Why blank nodes?

Taking a step back, and thinking about what we (Experian) actually use bNodes for, to inform our position on the various scope questions.

Basically, it's just a replacement for auto_increment columns in SQL.

There are two motivations for this

1) it saves the data generating process from minting a globally unique identifier for it
2) it's more efficient in the store, as there's no need to store a text symbol for it

This has been helped by Skolem URIs, as now we have an easy way to refer to them between SPARQL queries.

Any other features of bNodes are just a distraction or inconvenience really.

I'm sure other people have different reasons for using them, anyone care to share?

- Steve

-- 
Steve Harris, CTO
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Received on Friday, 7 September 2012 10:35:59 UTC