Re: RDF-ISSUE-121 (merge-is-union): Should the merge of two RDF graphs be defined as their set union? [RDF Concepts]

On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:46 AM, RDF Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:

> RDF-ISSUE-121 (merge-is-union): Should the merge of two RDF graphs be defined as their set union? [RDF Concepts]
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/121
> 
> Raised by: Antoine Zimmermann
> On product: RDF Concepts
> 
> (Note: I'm not sure whether it belong to RDF Semantics or RDF Concepts but probably both)
> 
> RDF Semantics is currently proposing to define merge as the set union of RDF graphs. Note that if not all sets of triples are RDF graphs (see ISSUE-120) then union of RDF graphs may not be an RDF graph.
> 
> Defining the merge as the union also means that a set of RDF graphs is not equivalent to its merge.

Which is correct. Consider the following example. I will use { } to indicate graph boundaries. In this example we are operating under the assumption that any set of triples counts as a graph. So there are three graphs here, two of them being subgraphs of the larger one:

{ { :a :p _:x . }
  { :b :p _:x . } }

If we merge the two smaller graphs, what do we get? With the 2004 definition of merge, we don't get the containing graph back: what we get is

{ :a :p _:x .
  :b :p _:x1 . }

So the graph is changed to a non-equivalent graph simply by merging its subgraphs, using the 2004 definition of merge. 

The new definition of merge = union means that merging subgraphs re-creates the original graph, and it coincides with the 2004 definition for graphs that do not share bnodes (which is almost all cases in practice.) It differs only in the case where two graphs (a) share a blank node but also (b) are not considered to be part of any larger or containing graph or structure. But this idea - of blank nodes accidentally being re-used in an unrelated graph - is incoherent and cannot arise in practice. 

Pat



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Received on Thursday, 14 March 2013 16:40:28 UTC