What kinds of use cases are ideal for SPARQL / RDF triple stores, but not property graphs?

Question

I see that SPARQL / RDF are standards, which is cool. But what types of use cases would lead one to choose a triplestore over a property graph?

Answer 1

RDF has the ability to model these types of relationships:

• parallel relationships:

2 subjects can be related to each other via multiple distinct predicates that have no relationship since object parts are properties of a subject part

One of the advantages of applying RDF in the representation of thesauri is the possibility of expanding relationship types with OWL or simply with RDF/RDFS (Reynolds et al. 2005). This would allow for the creation of a new relationship by defining some of its properties such as transitiveness, symmetry, inverse relationship or reflexivity, rigorously declaring the required semantic restrictions. This expansion would as well increase the likelihood of the successful application of thesauri for information retrieval on the Web. It furthermore represents a significant synergy in aspects related to the evolution and adaptation of the concept of thesaurus. The hierarchical and associative relationships can be expanded or their characteristics modified in the future, or customised for specific projects.

• human readable multilingual cross references:

(e.g., to refer to the paragraph 3 of the article 15 of the French Act of 15 may 2004, n. 106, the reference is written

   "urn:lex:fr:etat:loi:2004-05-15;106~art15-par3").

• canonical deep linking:

Using a different separator ("~") from the document name, the partition ID is not withheld by the browser but it is transmitted to the resolution process. This enables the resolver to retrieve (for example, out of a database), if it is possible, only the referred partition, otherwise to return the whole act.

• human readable redirects:

For example, if LegisLink were widely adopted, users would come to know that the URL http://legislink.org/us/hr-3200 will link to the current Congress’s H.R. 3200; the LegisLink URL is therefore readily usable by humans. And use of LegisLink for a particular piece of legislation is to some extent consistent with the use of URN:LEX for the same legislation: for example, a URN:LEX-based address such as http://legislink.org/urn:lex/us/federal:legislation:2009; 111.hr.3200@official;thomas.loc.gov:en$text-html could also lead to the current Congress’s H.R. 3200. A LegisLink-type service can include the URN:LEX syntax, but the URN:LEX syntax cannot subsume the simplified syntax being proposed for LegisLink.org.

• SVG Integration:

The MAGICS library only offered a Fortran interface which was not easy to maintain on web servers. Therefore it was decided to add an XML based format, called MagML to describe meteorological plots. With the redesign of Magics++ the list of graphics output formats was reviewed. SVG looked like an ideal candidate. SVG allows the definition of Meta data as loose text description and/or as RDF to be used in semantic web applications.

References

• Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web

• Advantages of thesauri representation with the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) compared with other proposed alternatives for the design of a Web-based thesauri management system

• draft-spinosa-urn-lex-01 - A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for Sources of Law (LEX)

• LegisLink.Org: Simplified Human-Readable URLs for Legislative Citations » VoxPopuLII

• Disambiguating RDF Identifiers

• Defence Supply Chain Management: Conceptual Framework and first Empirical Findings (pdf)

• A Model for Digital Libraries and its Translation to RDF (pdf)

• Generating SVG weather maps and meteorological graphs using Magics++

• Apache Curator Recipes

• PROV Model Primer