[rdf12-concepts] Feedback W3C Candidate Recommendation Snapshot (07 April 2026)

Dear RDF & SPARQL Working Group members,

following my last week's request for an extension of the feedback 
period, let me first thank you for giving me the opportunity to still 
send my feedback. Here I am starting with the RDF 1.2 Concepts and 
Abstract Data Model. I plan to send another feedback for the RDF 1.2 
Semantics later this week.

My general impression of the RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Data Model is 
that it is a good document. For someone familiar with previous versions 
of RDF, the document is a pretty straight-forward read, as it is mainly 
an incremental update of the RDF 1.1 Concepts specification. I 
appreciate that RDF 1.2 focuses on introducing only a small number of 
significant changes, with the new triple terms as probably the biggest 
change, followed by base directions and versioning of RDF data, and 
finally some corrections, such as specifying case-insensitivity of 
language tags, and editorial improvements, such as moving some material 
to the appendix, including the rdf:XMLLiteral datatype and the 
discussion about blank node Skolemization.

The following is a list of specific findings and suggestions:

* §1, example list of serialization syntaxes: I suggest to also mention 
RDF/XML, since it was the primary syntax in older versions of RDF and is 
still important for storing RDF data and for data exchange between tools.

* §1.1, spelling error: "The abstract data model ... while preserving 
the same stucture": should be "structure".

* §1.9, first table: The "object" row lists "triple" as a node kind. 
Shouldn't it be "triple term" instead, or is this considered 
interchangeable terminology?

* §1.9, second table: An RDF dataset is defined as "a pair" of a default 
graph and a set of named graphs. In several other places in the 
document, in particular at the beginning of §4 about "RDF Datasets", an 
RDF dataset is said to be "a collection" of RDF graphs. I suggest to 
stay consistent and always call an RDF dataset "a collection" of graphs.

* §2.2, second paragraph: "An implementation MAY determine string 
equality by comparing the code units of two strings that use the same 
Unicode character encoding (UTF-8 or UTF-16) without decoding the string 
into a Unicode code point sequence." I believe it is evident that, in 
order to be conformant, an implementation may internally apply any 
comparison approach, as long as it leads to the same result that one 
would get from comparing the Unicode code point sequences. I therefore 
suggest to remove this sentence as redundant, or at least not to state 
it within a normative context.

* §3.4, item 4 about base directions: The section does not state whether 
base direction strings (e.g. "ltr") are case sensitive or insensitive, 
whereas for all other components of a literal there exists some 
statement about case, e.g. that language tags are to be compared in a 
case-insensitive way. I think this should be clarified for base 
direction strings as well.


Best regards
Michael

Received on Tuesday, 12 May 2026 19:41:34 UTC