[w3ctag/design-reviews] WG New Spec: RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Data Model (Issue #1159)

pchampin created an issue (w3ctag/design-reviews#1159)

### Specification

https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/

### Explainer

https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-primer/

### Links

- The WG's request for this TAG review: https://  <!-- Usually a deep link into minutes or an email thread. -->
- Previous early design review, if any: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/####
- An introduction to the feature, aimed at unfamiliar audiences:
  Compared to RDF 1.1, the three main new features in RDF 1.2 are
  + triple-terms, that allow to make statements about other RDF statements (asserted or not) in a better way than the old-style reification
  + the ability to attach a base direction on language tagged strings, which complies with i18n good practices
  + a way to declare which version of RDF is used in RDF concrete syntaxes
- A description of the problems that end-users were facing before this proposal:
  + triple terms: https://www.w3.org/2021/12/rdf-star.html#background-and-motivation
  + base direction: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-dir-literal/#introduction
  + version announcement: was not neccessary before RDF 1.2 introduced the two features above
- Alternatives considered:
  + triple terms: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-star/presentations/RDF-star_Lotico.pdf#page=7
  + base direction: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-dir-literal/
  + version announcement: https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star-wg/issues/141
- Examples of how to use the proposal to solve the end-users' problems: see explainer
- What do the end-users experience with this proposal: since RDF's "end-users" are developers and information architect, the notion of "user experience" does not quite apply
- User research you did to validate the problem and/or design, if any: none by the WG (but triple-terms have long been studied by the academic community as RDF* / RDF-star)
- Web Platform Tests:  N/A


### The specification

- [x] Follows the [Web Platform Design Principles](https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/).
- [x] Includes Security and Privacy Considerations sections based on answers to the [Security/Privacy Questionnaire](https://www.w3.org/TR/security-privacy-questionnaire/).

### Where and by whom is the work is being done?

- GitHub repo: https://github.com/w3c/rdf-concepts/
- Primary contacts:
  - Olaf Hartig (@hartig), Invited Expert, Editor
  - Pierre-Antoine Champin (@phampin), W3C / Inria, Editor
  - Andy Seaborne (@afs), Apache Software Foundation, Editor
  - Adrian Gschwend (@ktk), Zazuko, Chair
  - Ora Lassila (@rdfguy), Amazon, Chair
- Organization/project driving the specification: W3C
- This work is being funded by: none
- Primary standards group developing this feature: RDF & SPARQL WG
- Incubation and standards groups that have discussed the design:
  - https://w3c.github.io/rdf-star/



### Feedback so far

- Active horizontal reviews: https:// <!-- Link to an issue like https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webnn/issues/239, https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/issues/1804, or https://github.com/w3c/did/issues/885, which itself links to the other horizontal reviews. If you haven't started the rest of the horizontal reviews, please consider doing so. -->
- Multi-stakeholder feedback:
  - Chromium comments:
  - Mozilla comments: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/NNN <!-- And/or other places they've given feedback -->
  - WebKit comments: https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/NNN <!-- And/or other places they've given feedback -->
  - {{...include feedback/review from developers, implementers, civil society, and others}}
- Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
- Status/issue trackers for implementations: <!-- Include links to [Chrome Status](https://chromestatus.com/), [Mozilla's](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/), [WebKit's Bugzilla](https://bugs.webkit.org/), and trackers for other implementations if those are known to you. -->


### You should also know that...

_No response_

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Received on Tuesday, 21 October 2025 17:23:01 UTC