Re: RDF and the Test of Independent Invention

> On Apr 27, 2016, at 1:49 PM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.  

Note that RDF Concepts defines a “Generalized RDF Triple” [1] which covers this case:

[[[
A generalized RDF triple is a triple having a subject, a predicate, and object, where each can be an IRI, a blank node or a literal. Ageneralized RDF graph is a set of generalized RDF triples.
]]]

Generalized triples were motivated by JSON-LD, which can emit BNodes for predicates if the context is defined that way. It does not create literal subjects or predicates, but the notion of a generalized triple allows for this.

Notation3 allows for literal subjects and graph subjects/objects, which may be another interesting use case.

Gregg Kellogg
gregg@greggkellogg.net

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#section-generalized-rdf

> 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 Thursday, 28 April 2016 19:38:01 UTC