Notation3, or N3 as it is more commonly known, is a shorthand non-XML serialization of Resource Description Framework models, designed with human-readability in mind: N3 is much more compact and readable than XML RDF notation. The format is being developed by Tim Berners-Lee and others from the Semantic Web community. A formalization of the logic underlying N3 was published by Berners-Lee and others in 2008.
N3 has several features that go beyond a serialization for RDF models, such as support for RDF-based rules. Turtle is a simplified, RDF-only subset of N3.
Examples
The following is an RDF model in standard XML notation:
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn"> <dc:title>Tony Benn</dc:title> <dc:publisher>Wikipedia</dc:publisher> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF>may be written in Notation3 like this:
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn> dc:title "Tony Benn"; dc:publisher "Wikipedia".This N3 code above would also be in valid Turtle syntax.
Comparison of Notation3, Turtle, and N-Triples
| Feature | Notation3 | Turtle | N-Triples | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Character encoding | UTF-8 | ASCII | ||
| Directives | @base | |||
| @forAll | ||||
| @forSome | ||||
| @keywords | ||||
| @prefix | ||||
| Lists | ||||
| () (DAML lists) | ||||
| { … } (statement lists) | ||||
| Literals | true / false(Boolean) | |||
| xsd:decimal (decimal arbitrary length) | ||||
| xsd:double (decimal double) | ||||
| xsd:integer (decimal integer) | ||||
| Syntactic sugar | RDF paths | |||
| QNames | ||||
| a/@a (equiv. to rdf:type) | ||||
| [] (shorthand for blank node) | ||||
| => (x implies y) | ||||
| <= (y implies x) | ||||
| = (x is equivalent to y) | ||||
| , (repeat object in list) | ||||
| ; (repeat subject/verb in list) | ||||
See also
External links
- Notation 3 W3C Submission
- Notation 3 Outline on W3C Design Issues by Tim Berners-Lee
- Notation 3 Primer: Getting into RDF & Semantic Web using N3
- A Rough Guide to Notation3
- RDF for "Little Languages"
- An editing mode of N3 for Emacs
- An editing mode of N3 for vim
- An editing mode of N3 for textmate
- An editing mode of N3 for gedit
- EulerGUI, an IDE centered on N3 editor with translation from RDF, with validation, prefix management, uploading of resources, graph view, table view, etc.
References
Berners-Lee, T. I. M.; Connolly, D. A. N.; Kagal, L.; Scharf, Y.; Hendler, J. I. M. (2008). "N3Logic: A logical framework for the World Wide Web". Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. 8 (3): 249–269. arXiv:0711.1533. doi:10.1017/S1471068407003213. /wiki/ArXiv_(identifier) ↩