Re: Oracle's stand regarding N-TRIPLES

Internally we call it .nt8, FWIW.

There's some appeal to just letting N-Triples rot and fall out of use, and replacing it with something more modern. On the other hand we have enough RDF syntaxes already.

- Steve

On 2011-08-19, at 10:26, Ian Davis wrote:

> One option could be to leave ntriples where it is and give the utf8 version a new name and put it on the REC track. U-Triples? (Maybe go further to U-Quads)
> 
> On 19 Aug 2011 10:18, "Steve Harris" <steve.harris@garlik.com> wrote:
> > I agree with Jeremy.
> > 
> > For us, the lack of UTF-8 support is a serious impediment to using N-Triples as a bulk dump/restore format.
> > 
> > We use UTF-8 internally to hold RDF literals, as every other format is natively UTF-8, so the export to N-Triples requires a lot of unnecessary and inefficient escaping.
> > 
> > - Steve
> > 
> > On 2011-08-18, at 23:26, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
> > 
> >> Hi Zhe
> >> 
> >> I find this a surprisingly strong position.
> >> When ingesting N-Triples the code path to read UTF-8 and the code path to read \uXXXX escape sequences are probably equally horrible. The UTF-8 code path is the more conventional one to be following on the Web.
> >> 
> >> It seems like a fairly small amount of extra code for a vendor to support, with negligible impact on performance. The only downside, that I can see, would be that new data will not be readable by old software, which is the normal downside with new versions of a format.
> >> 
> >> We may differ in our judgment about how important that downside is, or I may have missed some other disadvantage that motivates Oracle's strong reaction.
> >> 
> >> My understanding is that 2004 N-triples docs will be valid turtle docs ....
> >> 
> >> Jeremy
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> On 8/18/2011 9:05 AM, Zhe Wu wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>> 
> >>> After discussing with the whole Oracle Database Semantic Technologies team, we
> >>> have the following consensus within Oracle.
> >>> 
> >>> 1) The existing N-TRIPLES format [1] is key to Oracle's product;
> >>> 2) Oracle hasn't received from Oracle's customers any change request/suggestions regarding the current N-TRIPLES syntax;
> >>> 3) As a platform vendor, Oracle does not see any significant justifications to change/mend the existing syntax;
> >>> 
> >>> Hence Oracle will not support any major changes to the existing N-TRIPLE format, including
> >>> support for UTF-8.
> >>> 
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> 
> >>> Zhe& Souri
> >>> 
> >>> [1]http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-testcases/#ntriples (In "RDF Test Cases: W3C Recommendation 10 February 2004")
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Steve Harris, CTO, Garlik Limited
> > 1-3 Halford Road, Richmond, TW10 6AW, UK
> > +44 20 8439 8203 http://www.garlik.com/
> > Registered in England and Wales 535 7233 VAT # 849 0517 11
> > Registered office: Thames House, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AD
> > 
> > 

-- 
Steve Harris, CTO, Garlik Limited
1-3 Halford Road, Richmond, TW10 6AW, UK
+44 20 8439 8203  http://www.garlik.com/
Registered in England and Wales 535 7233 VAT # 849 0517 11
Registered office: Thames House, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AD