RDF data model API

Hi,

I'm writing some toy programs that handle RDF,  and
I think it is very useful if I can use common access API for RDF,
such as DOM for XML. For example, the following code is
to create a description with RDF for XML by Neel Sundaresan,
who is member of RDF Schema WG.

    // create a RDF object
  RDF rdf = new RDF();
  //  create a aboutAttr
  RDFAboutAttr aboutAttr = new RDFAboutAttr("http://www.ibm.com/xml/");

  // create a description, and add it to RDF object
  RDFDescription rdfa = new RDFDescription(aboutAttr);
  rdf.addRDFObject(rdfa);

  // add property
  rdfa.addProperty(new RDFProperty("DC:Creator", "Bob Schloss"));

The API is serialization-centric, and it is very tractable.
For another possibility, we can image a data-model-centric API such
like this:

    // create a RDF object
  RDF rdf = new RDF();
  //  create a resource
  Resource resource= new Resource("http://www.ibm.com/xml/");

  // create  statement for the resource, and add it to RDF object
  Statement statement = new Statement(resource);
  rdf.addDescription(desc);

  // add a property to statement
  statement.addProperty(new Property("DC:Creator", "Bob Schloss"));

If the RDF access API is provided,  it accelerates the development
of RDF tools. (DOM contributed to XML tools).  And if we can define the
API only by using DOM API, existing many XML processors that support
DOM can be used for RDF processing.

Have there been  any works or discussions for the API?

Some people say RDF is not needed, since they can simply use XML, but I
think such API for metadata description and processing is one of advantage
for RDF.

Naohiko Uramoto
Advanced Internet Technology, Network Applications, Tokyo Research
Laboratory,
IBM Research, tel:+81-462-73-4564, fax:+81-462-73-7413, uramoto@jp.ibm.com

Received on Wednesday, 20 January 1999 08:23:23 UTC