Is RDF/OWL a representation or the database?

Question

The RDF is defined as representing the information related to the semantic web and for the information exchange on web. But it is also widely used as the database. So, what exactly the RDF is about ?

The OWL is similar to the RDF, then why only RDF is used in the database and not the OWL ?

Answer 1

Asking what RDF is about is entirely too broad of a question, there is a lot to say in that regard. So I'll attempt to briefly answer the specific question.

An RDF database, which is really just a graph database, stores an RDF graph which you can then use SPARQL to query. RDF isn't the database, it's the data model.

OWL has a mapping to RDF, but generally, is used to define logical constructs that a reasoner can use to infer new information from existing data. Some RDF databases include a reasoner that can take advantage of OWL, serialized as RDF, to perform reasoning either at query time, or eagerly during data updates, to expose this new, inferred information, to users via SPARQL.