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RDF and the Test of Independent Invention

From: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 22:49:04 +0200
Message-ID: <CAKaEYhKDMiepyaUoRTFgVvzQ19pJvZPVj+NSruPcSfVJvm2aQg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
The test of independent invention [1] asks "If someone else had already
invented your system, would theirs work with yours?"

Now imagine if someone had invented RDF (lets call it RDF-L) but with one
slight difference.  You are allowed to have literals in the predicate
position.

Is there a way that RDF could be made to work with RDF-L.

This is more than a theoretical question, it has practical implications.
The "triple" model which ties key value pairs to a subject, could be
thought of as a type of Entity Attribute Value (EAV) [2] model.  There are
many examples of EAV models that allow literals in the "second" position.
JSON springs to mind.

Does RDF pass the TOII?  If not, can we work out a way to make it do so.
After some thought my current favourite idea is to make the following two
equivalent:

    "predicate" <--> urn:literal:predicate

Thoughts?

[1] https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Principles.html
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93attribute%E2%80%93value_model
Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2016 20:49:32 UTC

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