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Overview of the Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Date: February 18 2022

Summary: An overview of the RDF and how it works

Keywords: #rdf #overview #triplet #graph #framework #archive

Bibliography

W3C, "RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax." https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/ (accessed Feb. 18, 2022).

Table of Contents

    1. What Are RDF Triplets?
    2. What Are Examples of RDF Triplets?
  1. How To Cite
  2. References:
  3. Discussion:

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a family of specifications created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and formally adopted by W3C in 1999. Data mapped into the RDF form into triplets called RDF statements (also known as Semantic Triplets).

What Are RDF Triplets?

These triplets, or statements, are comprised of three components called the subject, the predicate, and the object. In summary, these components are described as:

It is synonymous with the idea of an entity in other data models.

What the RDF statement compactly communicates is that there holds some relationship, indicated by the predicate, between the Subject and Object.

What Are Examples of RDF Triplets?

Example RDF statements are:

Taking the statement "The sky is colored blue." the Subject is the phrase "sky", the Predicate is the verb phrase "is colored", and the Object is the final phrase, "blue". Moving forward from this example, it may be useful to think of the RDF statement as a labeled directed multigraph where components of the statement are typically broken down and stored in Relational Database Management Systems or native RDF file storage formats. Here is a way of visualizing the triplet for the given statements above:

graph LR

sky --is colored--> blue
ocean --is colored--> blue
grass --is colored--> green

The RDF triples "The sky is colored blue.", "Grass is colored green.", and "The ocean is colored blue" can all be represented as a Directed Multigraph \(G\). The nodes \(sky\), \(ocean\), and \(grass\) are Subjects, the nodes \(blue\) and \(green\) are Objects, and the edge \(is colored\) is the Predicate in these RDF triple.

How To Cite

Zelko, Jacob. Overview of the Resource Description Framework (RDF). https://jacobzelko.com/02182022165447-rdf-overview. February 18 2022.

References:

Discussion:

CC BY-SA 4.0 Jacob Zelko. Last modified: May 19, 2024. Website built with Franklin.jl and the Julia programming language.