Re: RDF vs. relational databases

There is an interesting document on "Relational Databases on the
Semantic Web" by Tim Berners-Lee (somehow old, but interesting):

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDB-RDF.html

Regards
marco

Maciej Gawinecki wrote:
> 
> Also, as usual the question is what for are you going to use it.
> Relational databases will win in performance competition, when you are
> talking about processing flat-structured data with linear order and it
> is often worth of consideration whether use of RDF e.g. for data-minining.
> 
> On the opposite site there are RDF graphs where travelling from one node
> to another one is usually more time-consuming but let's you express
> relations with starting node clearly.
> 
> There are some solutions where people store RDF graphs in persistent
> database models (by translating RDF graph into relations inside of db
> tables), and there are some encouraging results with performance. See
> topic of persistent models at:
> 
> http://jena.sourceforge.net
> 
> for more,
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Maciej
> 
> Henry Story napisał(a):
>>
>> This is how I would put it in short:
>>
>> "The Semantic Web is to all previous data formats what the internet is
>> to the previous networking protocols. It abstracts, interconnects and
>> overlays them. It can do this because it uses URIs at its core."
>>
>> As soon as you want to be able to use data in a network environment,
>> rdf is your friend. On the other hand the older technologies have been
>> around for longer, so they are better understood, and much better tooled.
>>
>> Henry
>>
>> On 29 Aug 2006, at 03:14, revi s. wrote:
>>
>>> I'm a newbie to RDF and have been facing a fundamental question as read
>>> more about RDF. RDF positions itself away from plain XML
>>> representations of data saying XML suited for representing data with
>>> containment hierarchies, and where "order" is important, whereas RDF
>>> has a flatter structure, represents only references among different
>>> entities. That sounds just like what a relational database is supposed
>>> to do, and those are critieria when deciding whether to used an XML DB
>>> or a relational DB to store your data.
>>> Where does RDF fit in, and how does it compare to relational databases.
>>> I keep hearing that databases are not good for "semi-structured" data,
>>> but am not yet able to understand how RDF addresses that. Mozilla for
>>> example uses RDF for very structured (table of content) data.
>>> What would be points of comparison where RDF is better suited to store
>>> and query my data?
>>> Revi S.
>>>
>>> Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com. Check it out.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
> 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 29 August 2006 14:44:28 UTC