Syntactic vs Semantic knowledge representation languages

FAIR I1 requires that metadata use a formal, accessible, shared and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation. The purpose of this principle is to ensure that metadata is expressed in a standardised format that can be interpreted and exchanged across systems.

FAIRsharing provides an API query that allows users to determine whether the formats associated with a database registered in FAIRsharing are syntactic or semantic. This information can be used by communities who wish to evaluate the FAIR-enabling qualities of a database in a more granular fashion, as grounded/linked data formats are considered more FAIR than syntactic ones. Syntactic formats (like CSV or XML) only provide basic structure, allowing a machine to parse rows and columns. Semantic formats (like JSON-LD or RDF) embed the meaning directly into the data.

This page lists those core/generic formats and languages that are considered syntactic and semantic. If a database record has a relationship to a model/format that is based on one of these generic formats, it will be assigned to the appropriate syntactic/semantic category.

To discover a database's relationship to a syntactic/semantic model/format, traverse the hierarchy of each model/format directly linked to the database record to identify the underlying generic format (for example RDF, XML, or JSON). The syntactic or semantic classification of that generic format is then inherited by the community-specific model/format, enabling the database to be classified according to the type of knowledge representation language it uses.

Syntactic

Semantic

JSON: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.5bbab9 HTML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.YugnuL XML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.b5cc91 CSV: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.1943d4 YAML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.288192 TSV: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.a978c9 HDF5: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.wvgta9

JSON-LD: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.8f9bbb RDF: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.p77ph9 RDF/XML: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.5cae72 TriG: https://fairsharing.org/7816 N-Quads: https://fairsharing.org/7817 RDFa: https://fairsharing.org/663 OWL: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.atygwy OBO: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.aa0eat TTL: https://fairsharing.org/FAIRsharing.3e194c N-triples: https://fairsharing.org/7815

If you would like a format adding to this list, please get in touch with us.