Statements

Statements are how entity relationships are described. You can think of them as three-part Fide ID anchored sentences that communicate meaning in a machine-readable, comparable way across systems.

Subject

The entity that the statement is about.

Property

The relationship entity that gives the statement its meaning.

Requirements

• MUST use the Entity Type DirectionalProperty or SymmetricProperty.
• MUST use the Reference Type NetworkResource.

Restrictions

• MUST NOT use Reference Identifier schema:identifier. The Fide ID already encodes the entity identifier.
• MUST NOT use Reference Identifier schema:sameAs. Use owl:sameAs for strict entity equality statements.

Object

The entity related to the subject by the property.

Normalization

For SymmetricProperty statements, subjectFideId and objectFideId MUST be ordered canonically before constructing the statement reference by lexicographic comparison of their Fide ID strings.

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Statement Restrictions

MUST NOT use a Statement with Property rdf:type or schema:additionalType with an Object type already directly encoded by the Subject Entity Type.

Subject Entity Type	Object Type Already Encoded
Statement	rdf:Statement
Person	schema:Person
Organization	org:Organization
CreativeWork	schema:CreativeWork
Event	schema:Event
TextLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:string
IntegerLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:integer
DecimalLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:decimal
BoolLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:boolean
DateLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:date
TimeLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:time
DateTimeLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:dateTime
DurationLiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:duration
URILiteral	rdf:Literal, xsd:anyURI
JSONLiteral	rdf:Literal, rdf:JSON

Statement Patterns

• Attributes - Describe properties of an entity.
• Links - Describes connections between entities.
• Actions - Describe an action taken by an actor.

Temporal Modeling

FCP supports two distinct ways to model time, and producers SHOULD choose the one that matches their semantic intent.

• Use time on an entity when time is part of the thing itself. Examples: an Event, an Action, or another temporally bounded entity with properties such as schema:startDate or schema:endDate.
• Use time on a Statement when time qualifies the applicability, validity, or truth interval of the claim. Examples: schema:validFrom or schema:validThrough attached to a statementFideId.

Producers SHOULD NOT redundantly model the same temporal boundary on both the entity and the statement unless they intentionally need both layers and the distinction is clear.