Re: Subjects as Literals

On Jul 1, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Steve Harris wrote:

> On 2010-07-01, at 03:20, Hugh Glaser wrote:
>> In fact, a question I would like to ask, but suspect that noone who  
>> can
>> answer it is still reading this thread ( :-) ):
>> For those who implement RDF stores, do you have to do something  
>> special to
>> reject RDF that has literals as subject?
>
> In my defence, I'm not reading this thread, but someone pointed me  
> at it :)
>
> Yes, and no. The engine will reject any literals in the subject  
> position, the index can't represent that. It's a source of  
> significant optimisations, and we would have to do a /lot/ of  
> engineering work to allow them.
>
> To be brief: I don't care if there are usecases for literals in the  
> subject position. It you could rewind time 10 years I might like  
> them in there, but we've invested millions of pounds in engineering  
> RDF stores conforming to RDF 2004. I can't, and won't throw that  
> work away for some relatively obscure benefits.
>

That is fine. Nobody mandates that your (or anyone else's) software  
must be able to handle all cases of RDF. But to impose an irrational  
limitation on a standard just because someone has spent a lot of money  
is a very bad way to make progress, IMO. Although, I believe that  
there are still people using COBOL, so you may have a point.

Pat Hayes

> - Steve
>
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Received on Friday, 2 July 2010 03:17:15 UTC