Re: Next weeks discussions and decision-making for RDF Star WG

Gregg Kellogg:  Regarding the different possibilities outlined above: RDF is a system for describing graphs/datasets composed of triples/statements. IMHO, the fundamental building block should be a graph, so I favor either leveraging named graphs or adding a top-level graphTerm (options 3 and 4 above). I think the impact on implementations, such as quad stores, favors reusing and refining the RDF 1.1 concept of named graphs, but with nuance given to graphs named by blank nodes. This also works as is with N-Quads. Representing graphTerms natively requires some form of syntactic extension (either embedded graphs, or a new space for graph identifiers) as well as defining a graphTerm similar to how we’ve already defined a tripleTerm in the abstract algebra.  If the WG is not able to take on the work for describing such use of named graphs, then I would favor doing something more like 1.1: reuse the existing reification vocabulary with syntactic sugar from the quotedTriple production of Turtle/TriG and SPARQL rather than adding a new tripleTerm which could interfere with future groups to take on the work of better describing the use of graphs as resources. But, I’m happy to go along with the consensus of the group whatever we decide.   Thanks, Gregg, great job! The four options you summarized perfectly reflect different trends.  Personally, I think the most interesting options are options 3 and 4. It seems to me that they do not necessarily have to be separate. Perhaps they can be combined. For example, the old version of TriG allows the optional = graph naming operator, which is very close to N3.   However, it is worth remembering that by introducing the concept of named graphs, we are doing away with Turtle (or rather, developing it so that it looks like TriG). Another issue is the (already official) abandonment of the RDF graphs concept for the hypervertices (hypernodes) data model (via the RDF dataset concept).   Option 1 seems to be the minimum plan. However, I'm content to support the group consensus, no matter what decision we reach.   Best,  Dominik