Re: Toward easier RDF: a proposal

On 11/26/2018 10:54 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:
> 
> XML and JSON are all about tree structures. RDF defines the more 
> flexible data structure of graphs

It probably doesn't matter for this discussion, but I've seen statements 
like this too often.  XML actually can represent graphs perfectly well. 
One way is by using ID/IDREFs, and there are many other ways.  Just 
because an XML document reads serially from start to finish doesn't mean 
it has to represent a tree instead of a graph (leaving aside the matter 
that a a tree is a particular kind of graph structure!).  In fact, 
that's obvious because the XML syntax for RDF interchange describes RDF 
graphs.

XML elements (the ones without ID values, anyway) can be considered to 
be typed anonymous nodes.  You could regard them as bnodes that have a 
type relation but not an ID.

TomP

Received on Tuesday, 27 November 2018 05:18:12 UTC