Is RDF Triple an expression of RDF?

Question

As the question asks the question, is there the same thing? Are they interchangeable? If not, explain the differences or explain an example.

Answer 1

Yes, in RDF, a statement basically matches a triple (or 3-tuple).

However, there is another concept called the statement of the operator, in which case you must take into account the fact that the triple can be declared by different objects (as is the case with people / organizations, and not with XML objects). In this context, the triple (subject, predicate, object) is not unique and should be described in different ways, depending on who formulates it.

The whole thing is somewhat stunning. I recommend reading this thread summary from the RDF Interest mailing list (bring a bite to eat). It comes down to a semantic description of the RDF itself.

To summarize, it all depends on what you mean by triple. Whether this is an abstract concept or an actual indication of it. If this is the first case, I consider it safe to assume that the triple and the statement are interchangeable. And most of the time when using RDF, this is the first case.

Answer 2

To quote the RDF Concepts specification (RDF version 1.1) :

The basic structure of abstract syntax is a set of triples, each of which consists of a subject, a predicate, and an object .... The statement of the RDF triple says that there is some relationship between the resources indicated by the subject and the object, indicated by the predicate. This operator, corresponding to the RDF triple, is known as the RDF operator.

In other words: an abstract structure consisting of a subject, a predicate and an object is called a “triple”. Triplets consist of IRIs, empty nodes, and / or literals. Each triple expresses some claims or facts about the world - this suggests that two things are in some relation to each other. This statement about the world is a “statement” encoded in triple form.

So, strictly speaking, there is a difference. But this is a very subtle distinction, and often the terms are simply used interchangeably.

Answer 3

One day I came across something on the Jena mailing list, scratching my head over the Statement-versus-Triple expansion (or similarly to the Node -versus-RDFNode difference) in the Jena Java code, and reported this . Here is the text from the mailing list:

We found that Model / Statement / RDFNode (API) works as an application interface, but this is not the right thing for storage abstractions, and Graph / Triple / Node (SPI) works better where regularity is more valuable. That is, we separated the application-oriented design from the subsystem design.