Position Paper for W3C RDF Next Steps Workshop, June 26-27, 2010,
Stanford, CA, USA
David Booth, Ph.D.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)
Latest version of this document: http://dbooth.org/2010/rdf2/
1. Standardize a rules language based
on SPARQL CONSTRUCT. (For example, see SPIN.)
Even if other rules languages are ultimately standardized as well, a
SPARQL-based rules language is a no brainer, since RDF users already
know SPARQL. If such a rules language were based strictly on
SPARQL CONSTRUCT -- nothing
more and nothing less -- the standardization effort would be minimal.
2. Standardize an XML Schema-friendly
serialization. And of course it must support named
graphs. TriX
is the most obvious candidate. Because RDF/XML is the only
standards-based serialization for RDF, people feel compelled to use it,
in spite of how awful it is.
3. Permit literals as subjects.
Although there are work-arounds, they add unnecessary complication,
confusion and debate.
4. Named graphs. Being
standardized will help push tools to uniformly support them.
5. Do something about bnodes!
(Somehow.) Get rid of them? Maybe provide a standard
namespace for minting recognizable, but unique URIs? In other
words, a standard way to skolomize them. E.g., http://w3.org/bnode/dbooth.org/2010/06/26/fribjam432
.
6. Standardize turtle, n3 or other
human-friendly syntax. Reading RDF/XML is like trying to
read hexadecimal.
What helps us (experts) is far less
important than what will help new users!