Re: Requirements for a possible "RDF 2.0"

Thanks for starting this discussion, Chris.

I'm not firmly convinced that a new RDF Working Group would greatly 
accelerate adoption of RDF. However, I think a new Working Group could 
perform valuable activities for the current Semantic Web community, 
which in turn would accelerate creation and deployment of Semantic Web 
applications, which in turn would drive increased adoption of these 
technologies.

Based on my own experience and what I've heard, here is what I would 
hope to see from a new RDF Working Group:

+ Detailed errata maintenance of the existing specs.

+ Deprecate little-used or "buggy" features (reification, bags). This 
sends a message to new adopters and educators that these features are 
probably not the right way to solve their problems.

+ Specify the semantics of named graphs. To be honest, I've used named 
graphs for many years without worrying about their formal semantics, and 
I don't know if they have / need to have any formal semantics. Something 
in line with how SPARQL views named graphs would be all I'd ask for 
here. (Note that the SPARQL WG is looking more at named graphs in the 
context of the SPARQL 1.1 Update and the SPARQL 1.1 Uniform HTTP 
Protocol for Managing RDF Graphs specifications currently under 
development [1],[2].)

+ Create new specifications for Turtle and for TriG. Turtle is widely 
supported and is SPARQL-like. (Really, SPARQL is Turtle-like, but from a 
specification point of view, I guess it's the other way around.) TriG is 
somewhat widely supported and is a natural extension of Turtle to 
serialize named graphs. I'd imagine the WG would consider specifying N3 
as well, but I'd prefer not to at this point.

+ Create a new RDF primer. This sounds like the job of a more SWEO-like 
or SW Best Practices & Deployment group, but there's only so much energy 
to go around. The primer would teach RDF thoroughly in terms of Turtle 
and TriG syntax.

+ Create a new RDF best practices guide. There are a variety of these 
scattered about, but a wiki-based cookbook hosted by the W3C (perhaps as 
part of the new SW Wiki) would be welcome. I'd cover topics such as 
ordered lists & units of measure here.

The WG should have a strict mandate to be compatible with existing RDF 
(modulo errata, of course).

Lee

[1] Editor's draft: http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/docs/update-1.1/

[2] Editor's draft: http://www.w3.org/2009/sparql/docs/http-rdf-update/

Chris Welty wrote:
> 
> 
> Without volunteering myself to be such a contact, I have (as both a 
> users of many RDF implementations and a W3C chair and I suppose a 
> self-declared semantic web expert) been the recipient of a lot of 
> complaints and suggestions regarding the design and implementation of 
> RDF, and at ISWC a few months ago I suggested to Ivan that we start 
> discussing starting a working group that would investigate a next 
> version of RDF.
> 
> This discussion is happening in several places already, and we thought 
> this was the best place to house that discussion for now.
> 
> A workshop on this subject is also in the planning, more news on that in 
> a week or two.
> 
> I suppose we don't really need to discuss whether we should investigate 
> an "RDF 2.0", but rather what kinds of requirements various RDF users 
> have that they would like to be considered (I'd like this thread to be 
> less "+1" and "-1" messages, and more "I'd like to see RDF support x...")
> 
> -Chris
>

Received on Monday, 18 January 2010 18:11:19 UTC