RE: ACTION: elaborate on 4.4

I don't want to clog the list with nubie questions that might better be
asked and answered elsewhere, but I've been wondering: why is RDF/XML *the*
standard recommendation for serializing RDF? How come one of the
triples-based formats, which look so comparatively simple and
straightforward by comparison, aren't at least offered as an alternative? Is
there something about a RDF graph that triples are unable to represent? If
so, I can't imagine what it would be.

Feel free to reply offline if that feels more appropriate.
TIA,
Howard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-rdf-dawg-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-rdf-dawg-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Kendall Clark
> Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 5:27 AM
> To: Seaborne, Andy
> Cc: RDF Data Access Working Group
> Subject: Re: ACTION: elaborate on 4.4
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 11:55:25AM +0100, Seaborne, Andy wrote:
>
> > There is one, defined recommendation for serializing RDF graphs - its
> > RDF/XML [1].  The one point of having a recommendation is so
> everyone can
> > implement one thing, and not many.
>
> And yet people keep making new ways to serialize RDF graphs. This
> suggests to me what people have been saying about RDF-XML forever: it
> has some warts and doesn't fit some (many?) situations. I happen to
> think -- the layer cake be damned (eaten?) -- that non-XML
> serializations of RDF are (or can be) a very good thing. I don't want
> to give those communities *no way* to use DAWG compliantly.
>
> Sorry, but "one ring to bind them"-style arguments fall super flat
> with me. Standardization != restriction of choices to 1 only.
>
> > Alternative serialization that encode more information (TriX
> for the named
> > graphs, some way of using N3 with formulae) is one thing: promoting
> > alternative serialises of RDF just negates the value to clients
> (samll and
> > large) of having one serialization to deal with.
>
> Tell that to Sir TBL! :>
>
> Best,
> Kendall
>

Received on Friday, 18 June 2004 11:59:52 UTC