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      Figure 3.3 Distributing data across the Web, cell by cell.

      This flexibility is required if we want our data distribution system to really support the AAA slogan that “Anyone can say Anything about Any topic.” If we take the AAA slogan seriously, any server needs to be able to make a statement about any entity (as is the case in Figure 3.2), but also any server needs to be able to specify any property of an entity (as is the case in Figure 3.1). The solution in Figure 3.3 has both of these benefits.

Table 3.2 Sample triples.

Table 3.3 Sample triples.

      But this solution also combines the costs of the other two strategies. Not only do we now need a global reference for the column headings, but we also need a global reference for the rows. In fact, each cell has to be represented with three values: a global reference for the row, a global reference for the column, and the value in the cell itself. This third strategy is the strategy taken by RDF. We will see how RDF resolves the issue of global reference later in this chapter, but for now, we will focus on how a table cell is represented and managed in RDF.

      Since a cell is represented with three values, the basic building block for RDF is called the triple. The identifier for the row is called the subject of the triple (following the notion from elementary grammar, since the subject is the thing that a statement is about). The identifier for the column is called the predicate of the triple (since columns specify properties of the entities in the rows). The value in the cell is called the object of the triple. Table 3.2 shows the triples in Figure 3.3 as subject, predicate, and object.

      Triples become more interesting when more than one triple refers to the same entity, such as in Table 3.3. When more than one triple refers to the same thing, sometimes it is convenient to view the triples as a directed graph in which each triple is an edge from its subject to its object, with the predicate as the label on the edge, as shown in Figure 3.4. The graph visualization in Figure 3.4 expresses the same information presented in Table 3.3, but everything we know about Shakespeare (either as subject or object) is displayed at a single node.