Re: Fwd: [xml-dev] Converting a variety of data formats, containingvario

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@w3.org>]

On Tue, 2016-10-04 at 13:59 -0500, Peter Hunsberger wrote:
> Forgot to copy the list on this response....
> 
> Without giving this much thought; you could probably prove that all
> data modes that are "computationally  tractable" are reducible to a
> model that is isomorphic to a triple store.

It turns out even RDF has moved away from triples - an RDF "named
graph" associates (implicitly) additional information with each triple.

For example, consider needing to track the date on which each fact was
entered into a database. If you store that as a separate triple (on
such-and-such a date triple-id foo was added by bar (oops that's four))
you need to record when that information was added and by whom. So you
end up using tyically 6 or more items rather than three. The triples
are a fiction, what Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart called
"lies-we-tell-to-children", like "an atom is an indivisible particle"
:)

So even RDF isn't reducible to RDF!

Liam

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Science-Discworld-Terry-Pratchett/dp/00919517
04