RDF serialization

Documentation

General structure

The XML document is a serialization of RDF triples.

The root tag of the document contains a list of namespace prefixes and their aliases, followed by tags describing unique RDF subjects (in the form of alphanumeric IDs if they are blank nodes, or URIs).

Example of a blank node subject:
<rdf:Description rdf:nodeID="TncAyrlD2310">
...
</rdf:Description>

Example of an URI subject:
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://brancusi1.usc.edu/thesaurus/definition/afferent/">
...
</rdf:Description>

Inside each tag describing the subject we use one or more tags to describe the corresponding pairs of predicates and objects that form with the subject an RDF triple.
The predicates are URIs and make heavy use of namespace prefixes. The objects can be of any type (BNode, URI, Literal).

Example of a URI predicate and a Literal object:
<bams:entry>afferent</bams:entry>

Example of a URI predicate and a URI object:
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://brancusi1.usc.edu/RDF/thesaurus"/>

Example of a URI predicate and a BNode (blank node) object:
<bams:reference rdf:nodeID="TncAyrlD324"/>

Sections

The subjects and their corresponding predicate-object pairs are listed in the following sections:

Identified using the rdf:type predicate like that:
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://brancusi1.usc.edu/RDF/thesaurus"/>

The other predicates used in this section and their meaning:
- bams:definition - the definition of the term
- bams:entry - the name
- bams:preferred - marks a preferred term in a series of synonyms

Identified using the rdf:type predicate like that:
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://brancusi1.usc.edu/RDF/thesaurusReference"/>

The other predicates used in this section and their meaning:
- bams:authors - author name
- bams:title - title
- bams:year - year of apparition