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Blank nodes are one of the contested flame warzones of RDF. The fact that they don't have a reified instance means that they are open to collapse with other bl
by j-pb 4y ago
Blank nodes are one of the contested flame warzones of RDF.
The fact that they don't have a reified instance means that they are open to collapse with other blank nodes in certain inference scenarios and makes a lot of problems as hard as graph isomorphism.
Much better to go with plain old UUIDs instead.
- zozbot234 4y agoRDF uses an open world assumption so "collapse" is always a possibility. That's why there are features like owl:DifferentFrom and related properties.
- j-pb 4y agoWhat you mean is the unique name assumption, which is distinct from the OWA, and may be viewed orthogonally and applied or not applied in different RDF contexts. The problem with blank nodes is that they circumvent the UNA in every scenario, and you need something like "reified blank nodes" to resolve this, a.k.a. by using UUIDs treated as blank nodes. See the following paper for a more in-depth discussion on the topic https://aidanhogan.com/docs/blank_nodes_jws.pdf https://aidanhogan.com/docs/blank_nodes_jws.pdf