Re: RDF* vs RDF vs named graphs

Dear all,

to be honest, at first, I too was not really convinced by RDF*, compared 
to what RDF already offers.

But the fact is that RDF* appeals to many people, including people that 
are not core members of the SemWeb community. So the least that we can 
do, I believe, is try to understand what makes it more appealing that 
what has been long been available before it.

Not only is RDF* appealing, but it is there already. It is implemented 
in multiple triple stores, which is great, but in slightly different and 
incompatible ways [1], which makes it less useful...

That's why I believe its is important to learn the lessons from RDF*'s 
popularity, and reach a consensus, among users and implementers, to 
avoid different implementation to drift apart and kill RDF's core 
purpose, which is interoperability.

As many of us, I have my own ideas and preferences about where this 
consensus should land, but I try to keep the discussion as open as 
possible. However, this is not a clean slate:

* RDF* has already been described in several papers, and

* as I mentioned above, it is already largely implemented.

Features that have changed from one paper to another (e.g. PG mode vs. 
SA mode) are often implemented differently across systems; those 
obviously need to be discussed.

Features that have been stable from the very beginning (e.g. "abstract" 
triples rather than triple occurrences) are usually already implemented 
consistently across systems. Changing them would have a big impact on 
both users and implementers, and may end up stopping the momentum that 
got us here in the first place. Changes of this kind remain an option 
and deserved to be discussed, in my opinion, but only if we have a very 
compelling argument and a large consensus to change them.

   best

[1] 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-star/2020Nov/att-0065/results-2020-11-27.tsv