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RDF

RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and is the main technology for the Semantic Web.
RDF is intended to give a simple means for making statements about resources. A resource can be anything and is identified by an URI (which is guaranteed to be globally unique).
RDF tries to capture information in subject-predicate-object triples.
RDF Properties

Triplet

An RDF triplet is a statement with
The subject and object can be thought of a node, the predicate as a directed edge that connnects these nodes.
The same IRI might function as both a node or predicate in the same graph.
IRIs, literals and blank nodes are also referred to as RDF terms.

IRI

An IRI is a Unicode string that corresponds to the syntax defined in RFC 3987. An IRI is absolute and may contain a fragment identifier.

Graph

An RDF graph is a set of triplets.

Datasets

An RDF dataset is a collection of RDF graphs.
One of these graphs is (an unnamed) default graph.
The other graphs have a unique name.
The default graph may be empty.

RDF Document

An RDF document contains («encodes») a a graph or dataset an a concrete RDF syntax.
RDF syntaxes that are able to semantically store graphs or datasets include

RDF Vocabulary

An RDF vocabulary provides a set of IRIs which are intended to be used in graphs.
An examples of such a vocuabluary is RDF Schema.
Typically, the IRIs of a vocabulary start with the same substring. This substring is referred to as namespace IRI.
Namespace IRIs can then be associated with a namespace prefix.

Literals

A literal corresponds to a fixed value of and consists of at least two elements:
If the datatype-IRI is http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#langString, the literal also has a language tag.
These literals are referred to as language-tagged strings. (See also rdf:langString).

Data types

XML Schema built-in data types

XML Schema built-in data types have the form http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#*

Other data types

Other data types include
  • rdf:HTML
  • rdf:XMLLiteral

See also

Semantic Web
SPARQL
Data exchange formats

Links

prefix.cc: namespace lookup for RDF developers.

Index