[XML4Lib] RDF or XML

[Keith Jenkins]

John, et al.

I've found this document to be a short, accessible introduction to the
main ideas behind RDF:

    Primer: Getting into RDF & Semantic Web using N3
    http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer.html

The examples use a format called "N3", which is more compact and
human-readable than the XML encoding of RDF (RDF/XML).  (I never
understood RDF/XML until I saw some examples in N3.)  Various
translators exist for converting between RDF/XML, N3, and other
formats.

The main idea of RDF, in my mind, is that all information is broken
down into "triples", three-word sentences consisting of a subject,
verb, and object.  This simplicity has many advantages, and it is
quite possible to model more complex relationships, such as events,
purely using triples (even if the resulting structure is not
necessarily intuitive).

>From what I've seen, RDF/XML seems to be the way that RDF data is most
commonly shared on the Web, so whatever you know about XML can be
applied to the world of RDF/XML.

-Keith

Keith Jenkins
GIS/Geospatial Applications Librarian
Mann Library, Cornell University