RDF Model Advantages

• The RDF model is made up of triples: as such, it can be efficiently implemented and stored; other models requiring variable-length fields would require a more cumbersome implementation.
• The RDF model is essentially the canonicalization of a (directed) graph, and so as such has all the advantages (and generality) of structuring information using graphs
• The basic RDF model can be processed even in absence of more detailed information (an "RDF schema") on the semantics: it already allows basic inferences to take place, since it can be logically seen as a fact basis
• The RDF model has the important property of being modular: the union of knowledge (directed graphs) is mapped into the union of the corresponding RDF structures; this means that:
  • information processing can be fully parallelized
  • in presence of partial information (an essential feature in a volatile environment like the web) the output is still a consistent RDF model, that can be succesfully processed
• ...

RDF Syntax Advantages

• RDF syntax is layered: the basic serialization syntax allows for quite a powerful encoding, while still being compact (@@this can be further elaborated, even in a mathematical sense).
• ...

Related Documents

• Why RDF is more than XML (Tim Berners-Lee) [easy]

RDF Bibliography On-line

• The RDF Model and Syntax Specification [technical]
• The RDF Schema Specification [technical]
• W3C's RDF Page [references]
• An Introduction to the Resource Description Framework
[easy]
• Tutorial on Using Web Metadata: Dublin Core and the Resource Description Framework, presented at WWW7. [easy]