There is an impression, that Labeled Property Graphs (LPGs) is more natural and efficient than Semantic Resource Description Framework (RDF) graphs. However, RDF graphs can be just as natural and efficient as LPGs. By leveraging the RDF concept of NamedGraphs, it is just as easy to model adding properties to an RDF graph as in any LPG. The key is in knowing how to make use of NamedGraphs to add properties to an RDF graph.
RDF, a triple consisting of “Subject, Predicate, and Object” is commonly known as a statement and an RDF triple store can be thought of as a large collection of statements. In most knowledge systems, it is useful to be able to add citations (or other properties) to any statement. The ability to add citations will offer the consumer of the statement a means to ascertain the quality of the statement. Such a feature would be especially important in an Enterprise Knowledge Graph that aggregates its data from various silos throughout the organization.
Another piece of the puzzle is to recognize that the majority of commercial RDF triple stores are quad stores. Originally, the fourth column in the quad store was envisioned to allow for partitioning a triple-store into sub-graphs, the W3C standard commonly known as named graphs. This fourth (named graph) column is to add citations (a.k.a. properties) to the triple statement.
The named graph-based approach for adding properties to triples/statements is considered a compact and efficient way of adding properties to triples. This method does not affect entailment and it is a straightforward way to exchange data to/from property graphs. As with most things, the devil is in the details.
To sum up, if property-like features are needed in RDF graph applications, then all that needs to be done is leverage the NamedGraph feature of RDF and make some minor code changes to the graph viewer to aggregate the properties together for business users.
Click here to read the original article published by Oracle.
Please give your feedback on this article or share a similar story for publishing by clicking here.
