Re: Request for feedback about RDF-star

We discussed this on our RDF-star call today. I originally supported using the original RDF namespace for this. The single URI we would mint would be for defining a type for triples, at least when they can be embedded. For example, this would be useful for describing the range and domain of properties where the subject/object can be inferred to be a triple, as opposed to some other kind of resource. Having a type for triples doesn’t seem to be too inconsistent with any other interpretation in RDF, but of course, “there lie dragons” …

My feeling now is that we should use a separate namespace, but moreover, mint a URI that is clearly intended to be transitional and strongly advise that it NOT be used for any long-term use. Noting that intended use of such a URI is, in any case, intended for vocabulary/ontology documents and not for end-user data, may help in limiting the potential for misuse.

A URI such as http://www.w3.org/ns/rdf-star/EmbeddedTriple#not-to-be-used-after-2021 might clarify the intended lifetime, and the CG report should make it clear that it SHOULD NOT be used for purposes other than validating the utility of the RDF-star approach might help.

IETF make similar statements about the expiration of draft reports [1]:

> Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time.

We should consider that similar wording accompany any CG report.

Gregg Kellogg
gregg@greggkellogg.net

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/demo/www.ietf.org/submit/

> On Mar 26, 2021, at 7:55 AM, carl mattocks <carlmattocks@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes - something new.. towards 'it to be possible/easy to accept a future term that *is* in W3C's RDF'
> 
> It was a pleasure to clarify
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 5:20 AM Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2021 at 09:25, Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine.champin@ercim.eu> wrote:
> Dear Semantic Web community,
> 
> as you may already know, an informal "task force" has been created in the RDF-DEV Community group [1], in order to produce a specification document for RDF-star (née RDF*) [2]. RDF-star extends RDF with native support for talking about RDF statements (as an alternative to standard reification), and already has a number of implementations. The goal of this work is to help ensure that all implementations are actually interoperable (which is not quite the case at the moment). Once this specification reaches a stable state, and provided that we get enough interest from RDF implementers and users, we will try to push it to Recommendation track.
> 
> We require your feedback on the following question. We aim to mint a new IRI to be used with RDF-star. In your opinion, is it acceptable/desirable to propose its inclusion in the RDF namespace [3], or should we instead mint it in a separate namespace? We could not really reach consensus in the group, hence we wish to get more opinions from the larger community.
> 
> We understand that, as a Community Group, we have no authority to actually update the namespace (this would be done only by a future WG). But if we succeed in bringing this to a REC, changing from rdf-star:X to rdf:X at that point will be impossible in practice (remember the "0.1" part in FOAF IRIs?). And we also want to avoid repeating the confusing namespace dichotomy of rdf: and rdfs:. If we don't make it to a REC, this will mean that RDF-star is not widely used anyway, and so our "polluting" the RDF namespace will have had no real impact.
> 
> Some people in the group, on the other hand, feel that the RDF namespace should considered fixed (although other specs have already added terms to it [4,5]), or that the semantics of RDF-star is not stable enough.
> 
> The whole discussion can be found in the minutes of our call [6].
> 
> Thanks in advance for your feedback.
> 
> My advice would be to do something new. Perhaps we could arrange for a new short memorable ns at W3C that could be used for this? 
> 
> It isn't clear at this juncture whether RDF-star is the seeds of the next generation of RDF, or a useful exploration. There are other approaches in the broad area (e.g. Wikidata's data model, labelled Property Graphs) and it is quite possible a future REC-track group might take another approach. So presuming upon official inclusion into the main RDF namespace seems a little presumptive of us, even if the hope is that things head in that direction. It could also feel like unfair on the W3C team to have us say "hey, millions of documents think that "foo" is in the rdf: namespace, how about making that true?".
> 
> Maybe there is something that could be said in the implementation guide for software-creators to encourage it to be possible/easy to accept a future term that *is* in W3C's RDF ns?
> 
> It's always been an awkward namespace btw, and is one of the oldest XML namespaces (the XML Namespace technology was designed at the same time, and not without controversies). One reason it is awkward is that it contains symbols that are used purely for the RDF/XML syntax designed back in 1997 (rdf:Description), but also it is just horribly long and hard to remember.
> 
>  
>   pa
> 
> 
> 
> [1] https://www.w3.org/community/rdf-dev/
> 
> [2] https://w3c.github.io/rdf-star/cg-spec/
> 
> [3] http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
> 
> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-plain-literal/
> 
> [5] https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11/
> 
> [6] https://w3c.github.io/rdf-star/Minutes/2021-03-12.html#t04
>

Received on Friday, 26 March 2021 16:12:29 UTC