While working with RDF and linked data, I have tried to come up with some tips that, in my opinion, make publishing RDF data better in a wide range of qualities. I shall call them IS4 Recommendations and list them in this article (which will be updated in case of new ones):
Imagine a window showing some sort of a feed. There are multiple panels displaying various messages as they arrive, plus some boxes that show statuses of other things, or the time, for example. This is a complex system usually thought of as calls to different APIs, various types of messages, presentation layer etc. What if I told you however that such a feat could be done even with only standardized formats, no client-side scripting and a single XML document and HTTP request?
There is nothing like null in RDF, but sometimes it is necessary to express its meaning in RDF documents as well. The issue with null however is that its semantics can vary from use to use, and thus one has to think about the intended meaning before going for one of the alternatives, as it may negatively affect the consistency of the data when an incorrect representation is selected.
Let's look at some examples.
I have never had anything against XML. Despite its many quirks and burdens, I think it is even nowadays a perfectly reasonable format for providing or accepting structured data, and I think it is meaningless (albeit trendy) to compare it with JSON trying to determine whichever is better. It is obvious those two languages were designed for different purposes, and the real virtue in data engineering (or software engineering in general) is to know and use the proper tools for completing a task.
In that regard, no language should come out as the winner in this comparison, but it should give you an idea when to use one or the other.
