W3C - World Wide Web Consortium
Previous Table of Contents Table of Contents Next

RDF(S) in Practice
RDF/XML has its Problems


  • RDF/XML was developed in the “prehistory” of XML
    • e.g., even namespaces did not exist!
  • Coordination was not perfect, leading to problems
    • the syntax cannot be checked with XML DTD-s
    • XML schemas are also a problem
    • encoding is verbose and complex
      • (e.g., simplifications lead to confusions)
  • but there is too much legacy code :-(
  • Don’t be influenced (and set back…) by the XML format
    • the important point is the model, XML is just syntax
    • other “serialization” methods may come to the fore

Ivan Herman, W3C 68 (134)