Interpretations of the Web of Data

TL;DR

This paper discusses the Web of Data's standards, especially RDF, and explores its potential as a general-purpose data model beyond its logic language origins, highlighting different interpretations including the Semantic Web.

Contribution

It proposes viewing RDF as a versatile data model separate from its logic roots and examines various interpretations of the Web of Data beyond the Semantic Web.

Findings

RDF can serve as a general-purpose data model.

Different interpretations of the Web of Data support diverse computing models.

Separating RDF from logic enhances its utility.

Abstract

The emerging Web of Data utilizes the web infrastructure to represent and interrelate data. The foundational standards of the Web of Data include the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). URIs are used to identify resources and RDF is used to relate resources. While RDF has been posited as a logic language designed specifically for knowledge representation and reasoning, it is more generally useful if it can conveniently support other models of computing. In order to realize the Web of Data as a general-purpose medium for storing and processing the world's data, it is necessary to separate RDF from its logic language legacy and frame it simply as a data model. Moreover, there is significant advantage in seeing the Semantic Web as a particular interpretation of the Web of Data that is focused specifically on knowledge representation and reasoning. By doing so, other interpretations of the Web of Data are exposed that realize RDF in different capacities and in support of different computing models.