Triplestores are Database Management Systems (DBMS) for data modeled using RDF. Unlike Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), which store data in relations (or tables) and are queried using SQL, triplestores store RDF triples and are queried using SPARQL.

A key feature of many triplestores is the ability to do inference. It is important to note that a DBMS typically offers the capacity to deal with concurrency, security, logging, recovery, and updates, in addition to loading and storing data. Not all Triplestores offer all these capabilities (yet).

Triplestore Implementations

Triplestores can be broadly classified in three types categories: Native triplestores, RDBMS-backed triplestores and NoSQL triplestores. Read more

Franz’s NoSQL database, AllegroGraph has become the first NoSQL database to load over one trillion RDF Triples, a feat that is being called “a major step forward in scalability for the Semantic Web.” According to the article, “A trillion RDF Statements eclipses the current state of the art for the Semantic Web data management but is a primary interest for companies like Amdocs that use triples to represent real-time knowledge about telecom customers. Per-customer, Amdocs uses about 4,000 triples, so a large telecom like China Mobile would easily need 2 trillion triples to have detailed knowledge about each single customer.” Read more