What is RDF?

RDF in Turtle syntax: subject, predicate, object triples describing each row.

Who uses it

Linked data and semantic web projects.

Writing RDF

Each row becomes a subject with one predicate per column, under an example.org namespace you will want to change.

What it can hold

RDF is a data interchange format. RDF stores statements rather than rows, so a table becomes one subject per row with a predicate per column. A machine can read the table back out of it without guessing, which is what makes it safe to convert into and out of.

It keeps

Nested values. A cell can hold a list or an object rather than only a single value.
A line break inside a cell, which survives rather than ending the row.
Its own record boundaries. A reader can take one row at a time without loading the file, and a copy that was cut off part way through still yields everything before the cut.

It cannot express

A null. An absent value and an empty one look the same, and nothing in the file says which was meant.
Any formatting. Bold, colour, column widths and merged cells have nowhere to go.
A header row. Column names are repeated on every record instead, which is why a file in this format is larger than the table it holds.

What it looks like

Example RDF

@prefix ex: <http://example.org/> .

ex:row1
    ex:id "007" ;
    ex:name "Halima Yusuf" ;
    ex:role "Analyst, data" ;
    ex:started "2024-03-15" ;
    ex:hours "38.5" .

ex:row2
    ex:id "012" ;
    ex:name "Jonah \"Jo\" Pryce" ;
    ex:role "Engineer" ;
    ex:started "2025-11-02" ;
    ex:hours "" .

ex:row3
    ex:id "104" ;
    ex:name "Wei Chen" ;
    ex:role "Manager" ;
    ex:started "2023-06-30" ;
    ex:hours "40" .

Questions

How do I open RDF files?

RDF is written by Tablizer rather than read by it. Open the file in whichever tool the format belongs to.

Is RDF a good format for sharing data?

It depends who is receiving it. Linked data and semantic web projects. If the recipient is outside that group, a plain CSV travels further than anything else.