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            <h1 class="title">RDF Binary using Apache Thrift</h1>
            
	<p>&ldquo;RDF Binary&rdquo; is a efficient format for RDF and RDF-related data using
<a href="https://thrift.apache.org/">Apache Thrift</a>
or  <a href="https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers">Google Protocol Buffers</a>
as the binary data encoding.</p>
<p>The W3C standard RDF syntaxes are text or XML based.  These incur costs in
parsing; the most human-readable formats also incur high costs to write, and
have limited scalability due to the need to analyse the data for pretty
printing rather than simply stream to output.</p>
<p>Binary formats are faster to process - they do not incur the parsing
costs of text-base formats.  &ldquo;RDF Binary&rdquo; defines basic encoding for RDF
terms, then builds data formats for RDF graphs, RDF datasets, and for
SPARQL result sets.  This gives a basis for high-performance linked data
systems.</p>
<p><a href="https://thrift.apache.org/">Thrift</a> and
<a href="https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers">Protobuf</a> provides efficient,
widely-used, binary encoding layers each with a large number of language
bindings.</p>
<p>For more details of <a href="http://afs.github.io/rdf-thrift">RDF Thrift</a>.</p>
<h2 id="encoding-terms-thrift">Thrift encoding of RDF Terms</h2>
<p>RDF Thrift uses the Thrift compact protocol.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/apache/jena/blob/main/jena-arq/Grammar/RDF-Thrift/BinaryRDF.thrift">BinaryRDF.thrift</a></p>
<h3 id="rdf-terms">RDF terms</h3>
<pre><code>struct RDF_IRI {
1: required string iri
}

# A prefix name (abbrev for an IRI)
struct RDF_PrefixName {
1: required string prefix ;
2: required string localName ;
}

struct RDF_BNode {
1: required string label
}

struct RDF_Literal {
1: required string  lex ;
2: optional string  langtag ;
3: optional string  datatype ;
4: optional RDF_PrefixName dtPrefix ;
}

struct RDF_Decimal {
1: required i64  value ;
2: required i32  scale ;
}

struct RDF_VAR {
1: required string name ;
}

struct RDF_ANY { }

struct RDF_UNDEF { }

struct RDF_REPEAT { }

union RDF_Term {
1: RDF_IRI          iri
2: RDF_BNode        bnode
3: RDF_Literal      literal
4: RDF_PrefixName   prefixName 
5: RDF_VAR          variable
6: RDF_ANY          any
7: RDF_UNDEF        undefined
8: RDF_REPEAT       repeat
9: RDF_Triple       tripleTerm  # RDF-star

# Value forms of literals.
10: i64             valInteger
11: double          valDouble
12: RDF_Decimal     valDecimal
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="encoding-thrift-tuples">Thrift encoding of Triples, Quads and rows.</h3>
<pre><code>struct RDF_Triple {
1: required RDF_Term S
2: required RDF_Term P
3: required RDF_Term O
}

struct RDF_Quad {
1: required RDF_Term S
2: required RDF_Term P
3: required RDF_Term O
4: optional RDF_Term G
}

struct RDF_PrefixDecl {
1: required string prefix ;
2: required string uri ;
}
</code></pre>
<h3 id="encoding-thrift-graphs-datasets">Thrift encoding of RDF Graphs and RDF Datasets</h3>
<pre><code>union RDF_StreamRow {
1: RDF_PrefixDecl   prefixDecl
2: RDF_Triple       triple
3: RDF_Quad         quad
}
</code></pre>
<p>RDF Graphs are encoded as a stream of <code>RDF_Triple</code> and <code>RDF_PrefixDecl</code>.</p>
<p>RDF Datasets are encoded as a stream of <code>RDF_Triple</code>, <code>RDF-Quad</code> and <code>RDF_PrefixDecl</code>.</p>
<h3 id="encoding-thrift-result-sets">Thrift encoding of SPARQL Result Sets</h3>
<p>A SPARQL Result Set is encoded as a list of variables (the header), then
a stream of rows (the results).</p>
<pre><code>struct RDF_VarTuple {
1: list&lt;RDF_VAR&gt; vars
}

struct RDF_DataTuple {
1: list&lt;RDF_Term&gt; row
}
</code></pre>
<h2 id="encoding-terms-protobuf">Protobuf encoding of RDF Terms</h2>
<p>The Protobuf schema is simialr.</p>
<p>Source:
<a href="https://github.com/apache/jena/blob/main/jena-arq/Grammar/RDF-Protobuf/binary-rdf.proto">binary-rdf.proto</a></p>
<p>Streaming isused to allow for abitrary size graphs. Therefore the steram items
(<code>RDF_StreamRow</code> below) are written with an initial length (<code>writeDelimitedTo</code>
in the Java API).</p>
<p>See
<a href="https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/techniques#streaming">Protobuf Techniques Streaming</a>.</p>
<pre><code>syntax = &quot;proto3&quot;;

option java_package         = &quot;org.apache.jena.riot.protobuf.wire&quot; ;

// Prefer one file with static inner classes.
option java_outer_classname = &quot;PB_RDF&quot; ;
// Optimize for speed (default)
option optimize_for = SPEED ;

//option java_multiple_files = true;
// ==== RDF Term Definitions 

message RDF_IRI {
  string iri = 1 ;
} 
 
// A prefix name (abbrev for an IRI)
message RDF_PrefixName {
  string prefix = 1 ;
  string localName = 2 ;
} 

message RDF_BNode {
  string label = 1 ;
  // 2 * fixed64
} 

// Common abbreviations for datatypes and other URIs?
// union with additional values. 

message RDF_Literal {
  string lex = 1 ;
  oneof literalKind {
    bool simple = 9 ;
    string langtag = 2 ;
    string datatype = 3 ;
    RDF_PrefixName dtPrefix = 4 ;
  }
}

message RDF_Decimal {
  sint64  value = 1 ;
  sint32  scale = 2 ;
}

message RDF_Var {
  string name = 1 ;
}

message RDF_ANY { }

message RDF_UNDEF { }

message RDF_REPEAT { }

message RDF_Term {
  oneof term {
    RDF_IRI        iri        = 1 ;
    RDF_BNode      bnode      = 2 ;
    RDF_Literal    literal    = 3 ;
    RDF_PrefixName prefixName = 4 ;
    RDF_Var        variable   = 5 ;
    RDF_Triple     tripleTerm = 6 ;
    RDF_ANY        any        = 7 ;
    RDF_UNDEF      undefined  = 8 ;
    RDF_REPEAT     repeat     = 9 ;
    
    // Value forms of literals.
    sint64         valInteger = 20 ;
    double         valDouble  = 21 ;
    RDF_Decimal    valDecimal = 22 ;
  }
}

// === StreamRDF items 

message RDF_Triple {
  RDF_Term S = 1 ;
  RDF_Term P = 2 ;
  RDF_Term O = 3 ;
}

message RDF_Quad {
  RDF_Term S = 1 ;
  RDF_Term P = 2 ;
  RDF_Term O = 3 ;
  RDF_Term G = 4 ;
}

// Prefix declaration
message RDF_PrefixDecl {
  string prefix = 1;
  string uri    = 2 ;
}

// StreamRDF
message RDF_StreamRow {
  oneof row {
    RDF_PrefixDecl   prefixDecl  = 1 ;
    RDF_Triple       triple      = 2 ;
    RDF_Quad         quad        = 3 ;
    RDF_IRI          base        = 4 ;
  }
}

message RDF_Stream {
  repeated RDF_StreamRow row = 1 ;
}

// ==== SPARQL Result Sets

message RDF_VarTuple {
  repeated RDF_Var vars = 1 ;
}

message RDF_DataTuple {
  repeated RDF_Term row = 1 ;
}

// ==== RDF Graph

message RDF_Graph {
  repeated RDF_Triple triple = 1 ;
}
</code></pre>

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