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Re: Well Behaved RDF - Taming Blank Nodes, etc.

From: Steve Harris <steve.harris@garlik.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:01:57 +0000
Cc: Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com>, Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
Message-Id: <1458EA45-1FB5-4961-B2AD-2539798B7790@garlik.com>
To: Lee Feigenbaum <lee@thefigtrees.net>
On 2012-12-18, at 16:34, Lee Feigenbaum wrote:

> On 12/18/2012 11:06 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
>>>>>>> Lee Feigenbaum <lee@thefigtrees.net> writes:
>>>>>>> On 12/18/2012 10:23 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
>> […]
>> 
>>  >> This way, one may easily end up with hundreds of URI's, each naming
>>  >> one and the only person which was unfortunate enough to sit next to
>>  >> our Lee.
>> 
>>  >> … And don't forget about all the owl:sameAs arcs necessary to manage
>>  >> this crowd!
>> 
>>  > OK, sure.  Why is having hundreds of URIs for this person any worse
>>  > than having hundreds of distinct blank nodes?
>> 
>> 	First of all, I'd assume that a typical RDF store implementation
>> 	will assign temporary identifiers (most likely integers) to
>> 	/all/ the nodes — both blank and named.  This way, one could
>> 	conserve space by /not/ storing permanent identifiers (URI's) in
>> 	addition to the temporary ones.
> 
> As you seem to acknowledge, storage conservation doesn't seem like a particularly compelling reason here :-)

There certainly are cases where it matters, we save a huge amount of money by using bNodes* instead of author-minted URIs.

* However, having another mechanism where the author requests the store to create a URI (like when you use bNode syntax, but always use RDF 1.1 skolemisation on output) would work just as well, and be less confusing.

- Steve

-- 
Steve Harris
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Received on Wednesday, 19 December 2012 12:02:27 UTC

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