Structured Data

Structured Data: Things, SolidDataset, and Containers

Structured data in this system uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) format. Data is around entities called Things. A Thing represents any object or concept you want to store information about. For example, if you're storing course information, you might create a Thing for a textbook, with properties like title and author. The author could be another Thing with its own properties.

Things don't exist independently; they must be part of a SolidDataset. A SolidDataset is a collection that holds multiple related Things together.

You can organize SolidDatasets using Containers, which work like folders in a file system. Containers can hold SolidDatasets and other resources, including additional Containers nested inside them.

To continue with the course example, your Wallet Storage could have a Container named fall2021/; fall2021/ contains another Container named courses/; courses/ contains a SolidDataset that corresponds to the course Writing101; and the Writing101 contains data about the Things (such as the books) for that course.

URL as Identifiers

Every Container, SolidDataset, and Thing has a unique URL that serves as its identifier.

• Container URLs always ends with a forward slash ( / ). This slash indicates that the URL points to a Container rather than a specific file (Thing) or dataset (SolidDataset).

• SolidDataset URLs are built from their location within the container hierarchy, followed by the SolidDataset's name.

• Thing URLs are also built from their location within the container hierarchy, followed by the SolidDataset they belong to, with a hash fragment (#) added before the name of the Thing itself.

Consider the following content in a Pod where the Pod URL is https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/:

Name	Type	URL
fall2021/	Container	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/
courses/	Container	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/courses/
Writing101	SolidDataset	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/courses/Writing101
book1	Thing	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/courses/Writing101#book1
book2	Thing	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/courses/Writing101#book2
otherThing	Thing	https://storage.inrupt.com/{rootContainer}/fall2021/courses/Writing101#otherThing