Think Different

When developing a Web application, it's standard practice to create a database structure on which server-side code is placed for the logic and UI layers. To connect to the database, the server-side code needs to do some basic creating, updating, deleting, and — most importantly — reading of records. As databases behind Web applications are typically relational databases, these CRUD operations are done using the well-known language, SQL. However, as Web development is increasingly occurring through object-oriented programming (OOP), the model is changing. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a perfect way to describe objects while maintaining the meaning of that data. Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL — pronounced "sparkle") is the language typically used to query against that data, as it syntactically matches the structure of RDF itself. Both RDF and SPARQL are technologies within what has been dubbed the Semantic Web stack. To fully e...