Overview

The RIF Working Group was originally chartered for two years, through November 2007. The charter has been extended twice, through May 2008 and May 2009. At this point, with work proceeding steadily and interest remaining high, the Working Group asks for a final extension through the end of November, 2009.

Timeline

The RIF Working Group charter divided the work into two phases, with the group given two years (through November 2007) to complete Phase 1. The charter said that if Phase 1 were completed and sufficient interest remained, the Director was expected to then extend the group to provide time for Phase 2. The charter suggested Phase 2 might include two language levels, with Level 2 reaching recommendation in June 2008 and Level 3 reaching recommendation in June 2009.

As the Working Group has progressed, the phasing approach has not been strictly followed. At this point, the group has approved publication of seven Recommendation Track Last Call documents (two at Second Last Call, one jointly with OWL), along with several Notes. The overall language described by the seven documents goes well beyond Phase 1 functionality and includes several of the features suggested for Phase 2 (in the language of the charter: fragments of OWL, Lloyd-Topor, some of HiLog, actions, and updates, along with many additional datatypes and builtins).

The group charter has been extended twice, through May 2008 and May 2009. The second extension request included a plan to reach Recommendation in this time; progress was slower than expected, as the work had many technical complications, but reaching Last Call still reflects real progress, see LastCallPlan.

At this point, the Working Group asks for a final 6-month extension (through 30 Nov 2009), during which time we intend to shepherd the seven working drafts through to Recommendation. This timeline is optimistic with respect to two external risks: (1) there may be communities with significant interests we have not yet heard from, and (2) we do not yet have multiple commitments to implement all the features in all our specifications. Nonetheless, we believe our best course of action is to proceed quickly with what we have, as there are communities waiting for RIF and waiting to standardize extensions to RIF and new RIF dialects.

Meetings and Participation

The Working Group expects to have about a dozen active participants through the year.

To date, the working has been holding weekly 90-minute telecons, along with various weekly task-force telecons as needed. After going to Last Call, the group anticipates reducing the all-group telecons to 60-minutes, about 1-2 times per month, and doing most of the work via e-mail.

Deliverables

Recommendations

These will each require wide external review, multiple interoperating implementations, and a test suite.

BLD, SWC, FLD, DTB, PRD, Core, rdf-text

proceed with these LC drafts to REC; respond to public comments, fix bugs, gather implementation experience; extend test suite. rdf:text is joint with the OWL WG.

Working Group Note

UCR

This can be updated, as RIF progresses, perhaps with simpler more practical examples from the existing dialects.

Test

The test suite will be developed and extended for use as we gather implementation experience.

XML Data Interoperation

Informational note on how RIF documents can be combined with XML data sources.