Programming languages and principles for read–write linked data

Abstract

This work addresses a gap in the foundations of computer science. In particular, only a limited number of models address design decisions in modern Web architectures. The development of the modern Web architecture tends to be guided by the intuition of engineers. The intuition of an engineer is probably more powerful than any model; however, models are important tools to aid principled design decisions. No model is sufficiently strong to provide absolute certainty of correctness; however, an architecture accompanied by a model is stronger than an architecture accompanied solely by intuition lead by the personal, hence subjective, subliminal ego.

The Web of Data describes an architecture characterised by key W3C standards. Key standards include a semi-structured data format, entailment mechanism and query language. Recently, prominent figures have drawn attention to the necessity of update languages for the Web of Data, coining the notion of Read–Write Linked Data. A dynamicWeb of Data with updates is a more realistic reflection of the Web.

An established and versatile approach to modelling dynamic languages is to define an operational semantics. This work provides such an operational semantics for a Read–Write Linked Data architecture. Furthermore, the model is sufficiently general to capture the established standards, including queries and entailments. Each feature is relative easily modelled in isolation; however a model which checks that the key standards socialise is a greater challenge to which operational semantics are suited. The model validates most features of the standards while raising some serious questions.

Further to evaluating W3C standards, the operational mantics provides a foundation for static analysis. One approach is to derive an algebra for the model. The algebra is proven to be sound with respect to the operational semantics. Soundness ensures that the algebraic rules preserve operational behaviour. If the algebra establishes that two updates are equivalent, then they have the same operational capabilities. This is useful for optimisation, since the real cost of executing the updates may differ, despite their equivalent expressive powers. A notion of operational refinement is discussed, which allows a non-deterministic update to be refined to a more deterministic update.

Another approach to the static analysis of Read–Write Linked Data is through a type system. The simplest type system for this application simply checks that well understood terms which appear in the semi-structured data, such as numbers and strings of characters, are used correctly. Static analysis then verifies that basic runtime errors in a well typed program do not occur. Type systems for URIs are also investigated, inspired by W3C standards. Type systems for URIs are controversial, since URIs have no internal structure thus have no obvious non-trivial types. Thus a flexible type system which accommodates several approaches to typing URIs is proposed.

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ORCID for V. Sassone: orcid.org/0000-0002-6432-1482

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