What's a RDF triple?

Question

In layman\'s terms, what\'s a RDF triple?

Answer 1

Triple explained by example

Be there a table that relates users and questions.

TABLE dc:creator
-------------------------
| Question |   User     |
-------------------------
|    45    |   485527   |
|    44    |   485527   |
|    40    |   485528   |

This could conceptually be expressed in three RDF triples like...

<question:45> <dc:creator> <user:485527>
<question:44> <dc:creator> <user:485527>
<question:40> <dc:creator> <user:485528>

...so that each row is converted to one triple that relates a user to a question. The general form of each triple can be described as:

<Subject> <Predicate> <Object>

One specialty about RDF is, that you can (or must) use URIs/IRIs to identify entities as well as relations. Find more here. This makes it possible for everyone to reuse already existing relations (predicates) and to publish statements about arbitrary entities in the www.

Example relating a SO answer to its creator:

<https://stackoverflow.com/a/49066324/1485527>   
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator> 
<https://stackoverflow.com/users/1485527>

Answer 2

Note, that it can get a bit more complicated. RDF triples can also be considered Subjects or Objects, so you can have something like: Bart -> said -> ( triples -> can be -> objects)