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.