![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Any arbitrary information about a thing can be expressed using three pieces of information. The thing itself, the attribute associated with the thing, and the nature of that association. In computer jargon, this type of the relationship can be enumerated any number of ways, using different language, but the idea is basically the same.
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an attempt to describe all information on the web in a meaningful way. They call it a "Semantic Web" and their name for the triad of information a 3-tuple. One schema calls it an EAV, Entity-Attribute-Value group. In the old days, we called this a subject-property-object relationship, or a subject-predicate-object. If that last one sounds eerily familiar, it's because you probably slept though it in English class; grammar bores the hell out of everyone.
EAV databases are used for things like medical applications. They're an attempt to adapt to the need to collects data for which the structure is not always known, or at least unusually dynamic. I sometimes use EAV design philosophies in Object Oriented programming, like a current project I'm working on.
Here's the rub. The subject is defined by property-object relationships. Ultimately, everything we think of as the subject is really just huge series of property-object pairs, pointing at a common nexus. Thought of this way, the subject itself does not exist at all, only the properties that we associate with it, converging to create thingness.
I quite enjoyed this thought, I suspect most people will just think I'm odd, but I wanted to get it down.
Consider, all visible light is actually completely invisible. We cannot "see" light. What we perceive of light is it's reflection as it bounces off things around us...
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an attempt to describe all information on the web in a meaningful way. They call it a "Semantic Web" and their name for the triad of information a 3-tuple. One schema calls it an EAV, Entity-Attribute-Value group. In the old days, we called this a subject-property-object relationship, or a subject-predicate-object. If that last one sounds eerily familiar, it's because you probably slept though it in English class; grammar bores the hell out of everyone.
EAV databases are used for things like medical applications. They're an attempt to adapt to the need to collects data for which the structure is not always known, or at least unusually dynamic. I sometimes use EAV design philosophies in Object Oriented programming, like a current project I'm working on.
Here's the rub. The subject is defined by property-object relationships. Ultimately, everything we think of as the subject is really just huge series of property-object pairs, pointing at a common nexus. Thought of this way, the subject itself does not exist at all, only the properties that we associate with it, converging to create thingness.
I quite enjoyed this thought, I suspect most people will just think I'm odd, but I wanted to get it down.
Consider, all visible light is actually completely invisible. We cannot "see" light. What we perceive of light is it's reflection as it bounces off things around us...
