- From: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 15:41:24 +0200
- To: public-rww <public-rww@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <CAKaEYhKqmfuFOa_yR+N111MW_8S2==nM7mmAxtigh5WBh3_ukg@mail.gmail.com>
This group is based on the idea of combining two Web-related concepts to help solve some of the long-standing challenges involved in building and combining software: 1. *RDF*, the Resource Description Framework, is a W3C Recommended<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/>general technique for conveying information. It has a handful of syntaxes, including RDF/XML <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/>, RDFa<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-core/>, and Turtle <http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/>, any of which can be used to transmit RDF statements. The items about which information is expressed in RDF documents are identified with URIs (eg, http://example.com/products/Widget-71) but the existing RDF specifications do not cover dereferencing them. RDF is the basis for Linked Data <http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html> and the Semantic Web <http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/>. 2. With *RESTful APIs* and *RESTful Web Services*, clients use basic HTTP verbs <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html#sec9>, with their simple and direct meaning, to obtain and alter the state of objects on the server. In these APIs, the remote information objects are identified with URIs which are dereferenced in every operation. RESTful APIs can be defined independent of the formats used for conveying the state of the objects; typically services use custom XML and/or JSON encodings of state information. The combination of RDF and RESTful APIs is therefore natural, with RDF providing a standard way to serialize information about things identified by URIs and REST providing a way to obtain and alter the state of those things. This approach has been proposed and explored for some time, in academia and industry, as shown by the items listed in References<http://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/charter#ref>. Within W3C, the SPARQL Working Group developed a RESTful protocol<http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-http-rdf-update/>for accessing data in SPARQL data stores and discussed its wider applicability. The participants in the Linked Enterprise Data Patterns Workshop <http://www.w3.org/2011/09/LinkedData/Report> expressed general support for the creation of a Working Group to define a way to use RDF with RESTful APIs in support of application integration. The basic technique here is to expose application data objects ("resources") on the Web, allowing authorized clients to see and modify object state using HTTP operations (GET, PUT, etc) with an RDF data format. This RESTful approach leverages existing Web technology, including caching, linking, and indexing, and the use of RDF facilitates integration of data across systems and applications. This approach dovetails with SPARQL and is positioned for developers who want more direct access to the application data. The Linked Data Platform is envisioned as an enterprise-ready collection of standard techniques and services based on using RESTful APIs and the W3C Semantic Web stack. Simple LDP applications can be developed and deployed using only RDF and conventional HTTP infrastructure. More extensive LDP applications can be built using other elements of the stack, including RDFS<http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/>, SPARQL <http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/>, OWL<http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/>, RIF <http://www.w3.org/TR/rif-overview/>, and the PROV<http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-primer/>provenance vocabulary. Although expertise in these specialized elements may be helpful, it is not necessary for participation in this group and should not be required for using the Linked Data Platform. http://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/charter
Received on Friday, 11 May 2012 13:42:03 UTC