Why RDF?

RDF (Resource Description Framework) has a model for combining many different vocabularies created independently

• RDF has objects (people, documents, events, locations) and their properties (name, identifier) and relationships (attendee, knows, created)
• RDF Schema and OWL can be used to document how these objects and properties relate to each other in a 'schema' or 'ontology' (a reuseable, machine-readable vocabulary)
• RDFS and OWL can also be used to make connections between different vocabularies (subclass, domain, range)
• RDF (sometimes enhanced with OWL) can be used to merge information about things from different sources: different descriptions of the same object can be combined together

RDF is designed for combining vocabularies describing overlapping domains of interest, and for merging, storing and searching data defined in this way.