STIL: An Extended Resource Description Framework and an Advanced Query Language for Metadatabases.

RDF, the current standard for the representation of Web metadata, is based on a simple graph model that ensures logical interoperability between metadata formats. This model is however too limited to represent natively complex metadata structures such as sets, lists, structured property values and reified triples, which are simulated using blank nodes and built-in vocabularies. This situation tend to blur the semantics of RDF graphs and complicate the expression of queries. In this article, we extend RDF with n-ary statements and statement nesting, so that complex metadata structures are expressed natively. A query language over this extended RDF is also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]