Dangling Meta Data Graphs (Caution: Very Technical)

Nepomuk in KDE uses NRL – the Nepomuk Representation Language – especially the named graphs that it defines. Each triple that is stored in the Nepomuk database is stored in a named graph. We use this graph to attach meta data to the triples themselves. So far this is restricted to the creation date but in the future there will be more like the creator (for shared meta data) and the modification date (this is a bit tricky since technically triples are never modified, only added and deleted. But from a user’s point of view changing a rating means changing a triple.).

What did I say? “We attach meta data to the triples”? Well, to be exact we attach it to the graph which contains the triples. And since everything is triples (or quadruples since there is the named graph) the meta data is, too. And like every triple these also need to be put in a dedicated named graph – the meta data graph. Thus, each triple is contained in one graph and each graph has exactly one meta data graph.

So far so good. But what happens if we delete all triples in a graph? Well, the graph ceases to exist since graphs like resources in an RDF database do only exist due to the triples in which they occur.

And that is when it happens: dangling meta data graphs, i.e. meta data graphs that describe a graph which does no longer exist.

In theory Nepomuk could delete these automatically but I decided against that for performance reasons. It would have to check for dangling meta data graphs after each removal operation. So for now (until I come up with some database maintenance service) these graphs are just waste hanging around not bothering anyone (they are small).

In case you want to check how many of them you have in your database use the following command (see the Nepomuk Tips and Tricks for nepomukcmd):

nepomukcmd query 'select count(?mg) where { ?mg nrl:coreGraphMetadataFor ?g . OPTIONAL { graph ?g { ?s ?p ?o . } . } . FILTER(!BOUND(?s)) . }'

And to simply delete them use a bit of shell magic (the –foo is important since it removes any human-readability gimmicks from the otuput):

for a in `nepomukcmd --foo query 'select ?mg where { ?mg nrl:coreGraphMetadataFor ?g . OPTIONAL { graph ?g { ?s ?p ?o . } . } . FILTER(!BOUND(?s)) . }'`; do nepomukcmd rmgraph "$a"; done