What is RDF?

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a fundamental building block of FOLIO and plays a crucial role in how legal standards are represented and made interoperable.

What is RDF?

RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a standard model for data interchange on the web and serves as the foundation of the Semantic Web. It provides a way to express information about resources in a form that can be processed by machines.

The key feature of RDF is that it represents information as “triples” - simple statements in the form of subject-predicate-object expressions (e.g., “Court Decision” - “is issued by” - “Judge”). These triples form a directed, labeled graph where the nodes are subjects and objects, and the predicates are the edges connecting them.

How RDF Works in FOLIO

In FOLIO, RDF serves several critical functions:

  1. Representing Legal Concepts: Each legal concept in FOLIO is represented as a resource with a unique identifier (IRI).

  2. Defining Relationships: RDF triples establish the relationships between legal concepts, such as:

    • “Contract” - “is a type of” - “Legal Document”
    • “GDPR Article 6” - “regulates” - “Lawful Processing”

  3. Enabling Interoperability: Because RDF is a standard, systems using FOLIO can exchange information using a common format, even if their internal representations differ.

For example, a law firm’s contract management system and a regulatory compliance tool can both understand and process the RDF statement “Non-Disclosure Agreement” - “is a type of” - “Contract”, even if they have completely different software architectures.

RDF Serialization Formats

RDF can be expressed in several formats, each with advantages in different contexts:

  • RDF/XML: The original XML syntax for RDF
  • Turtle: A more readable text-based format
  • JSON-LD: JSON-based format that’s popular in web applications
  • N-Triples: A line-based, plain text format

FOLIO supports multiple formats, allowing different systems to consume the data in their preferred way. This flexibility is part of FOLIO’s commitment to interoperability between multiple standards and systems.

RDF provides several key benefits for representing legal standards:

  1. Flexibility: New relationships and properties can be added without disrupting existing ones.
  2. Extensibility: Different organizations can extend the model with their own terms.
  3. Federation: Multiple sources of information can be combined coherently.
  4. Precision: Formal semantics reduce ambiguity in legal terminology.

Example: RDF in FOLIO

Here’s a simplified example of how FOLIO might represent a legal concept in RDF (using Turtle syntax):

@prefix folio: <https://folio.openlegalstandard.org/> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

folio:R8pNPutX0TN6DlEqkyZuxSw rdf:type owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "District Court, S.D. New York" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf folio:USDistrictCourts ;
    skos:altLabel "S.D. N.Y.", "S.D.N.Y.", "SDNY", 
                  "Southern District of New York", "NYSD" .

This shows how FOLIO represents a court with its preferred label, alternative labels, and its position in the court hierarchy.

How RDF Supports FOLIO’s Modular and Federated Design

RDF is particularly well-suited to FOLIO’s modular and federated approach because:

  • Modularity: Different aspects of legal knowledge can be represented in separate RDF graphs that can be combined as needed.
  • Federation: RDF was designed to merge information from multiple sources, making it ideal for FOLIO’s federated design.
  • Distributed Development: Different organizations can develop and maintain their own RDF data while ensuring interoperability.

Explore the FOLIO Taxonomy

Browse the complete FOLIO taxonomy through our interactive browser.

Explore Taxonomy →

Further Reading

To continue exploring the technologies that power FOLIO: