Triplestore
Database for storage and retrieval of triples
A triplestore or RDF store is a purpose-built database for the storage and retrieval of triples through semantic queries. A triple is a data entity composed of subject, predicate, object, like "Bob is 35" (i.e., Bob's age measured in years is 35) or "Bob knows Fred".
Much like a relational database, information in a triplestore is stored and retrieved via a query language. SPARQL is the W3C-standardized query language for querying RDF data, and is implemented by most actively maintained RDF triplestores. Unlike a relational database, a triplestore is optimized for the storage and retrieval of triples. In addition to queries, triples can usually be imported and exported using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and other formats.
01Implementations
Some triplestores have been built as database engines from scratch, while others have been built on top of existing commercial relational database engines (such as SQL-based) or NoSQL document-oriented database engines. Like the early development of online analytical processing (OLAP) databases, this intermediate approach allowed large and powerful database engines to be constructed for little programming effort in the initial phases of triplestore development. A difficulty with implementing triplestores over SQL is that although "triples" may thus be "stored", implementing efficient querying of a graph-based RDF model (such as mapping from SPARQL) onto SQL queries is difficult.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Triplestore”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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