RE: edge-Node-edge relationship construct (was: RE: Placing a comment on a relationship?!)

Specifically as to scalable and efficient storage, I'll 
stipulate up front that that's not my department, but...

I would speculate that either a specialized RDF store or 
a store built on an RDBMS would cope with the intermediate 
node strategy more simply and more efficiently than with 
other strategies such as predicate-per-instance, reification,...

BTW Paul, not as a challenge but as a question from genuine 
interest, is there a particular answer to Richard's 
requirements that you would advocate (say if he were building 
a big system on TKS? :)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Michael 
> Brian Orr
> 
> > From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org 
> > [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Paul Gearon
> > 
> > Michael Brian Orr wrote:
> > <snip/>
> > 
> > > I've used the "composed relationship that indirects via 
> > > an intervening node" approach with excellent results in 
> > > building a specialized class library over an RDF 
> > > library... 
> > 
> > The advantage of "code" is that your data structures can be
> > quite flexible, as demonstrated.  However, representation 
> > on disk becomes difficult...
> >
> ----( SNIP )------------
> > 
> > Anyway, my point is that this solution only seems to be 
> > useful for "in-memory" code, rather than the general case.  
> 
> The solution I described doesn't rely on any state outside the 
> graph; in my case I persist completely as NTriples. 
> 
> What I do - and what I think Graham Klyne was describing, 
> though I haven't followed his citations yet - is to bulk up 
> certain node relationships by representing them not as 
> 
>     Subject  predicate  Object  .
> 
> but as 
> 
>     Subject  predicate'  Intermediate  .
>     Intermediate  predicate'  Object  .
> 
> The upside is that you can refer to this edge-analogue 
> (instance) by ID, and you can attach additional edges to it. 
> 
> The downside is that you add some complexity to the graph (as 
> do all the solutions that have been discussed on this thread). 
> It doesn't use anything non-RDF; it does use a simple but not 
> quite trivial graph idiom. I edit my graph with Protege all 
> the time; it's just that the edge-IntermediateNode-edge 
> construct is visible and must at times be manipulated 
> explicitly. 
> 
> This pattern works well in the class library case because 
> it's so easy to do the interpretation of the idiomatic 
> construct in the API, by exposing instances simultaneously as 
> IGraphEdge and IGraphNode (or whatever). 
> 
> Regards, 
> Mike
> 
> 
>

Received on Friday, 21 May 2004 03:32:21 UTC