# JavaScript RDF standards and the future of RDF on constrained devices

By Thomas Bergwinkl, Zazuko

I co-chaired the Representation Task Force in the RDFJS Community Group with the goal to create a specification for:

- interchangeable representation of RDF data
- standard interfaces for parsers and serializers

The specification is not yet final, but the most important libraries aligned their interfaces already accordingly.
Also different parties agreed in a joint effort to create RDF.js, a new library based on the new specification.
I contribute the code of the RDF-Ext library to RDF.js.

The specification covers only a low level part, very close to the RDF model.
The higher level interface are on purpose open, as there are many different options, approaches and preferences of the developers.
For that part of the stack, I implemented two libraries.
SimpleRDF does graph to object mapping in read and write mode.
Clownface is a Gremlin inspired graph traversing library which also supports read and write mode.

Another reason to keep the specification very simple and lightweight were the possibility to run JavaScript on constrained devices.
Better serialisations are a requirement to exchange RDF on these devices.
Porting the specification to C or C++ could be useful.
Not only for native programs, we can also expect WebAssembly will find it's way to constrained devices.

At the workshop the JavaScript RDF stack should be discussed, as future W3C specifications may rely on it.
Also existing high level libraries and the experience of using them could be useful input for any questions related to languages and interface to access graph data, not only in JavaScript.
Participants of the workshop should also have a look at APIs and formats from constrained devices perspective.

- RDFJS specification: http://rdf.js.org/
- GitHub repository of the Representation Task Force: https://github.com/rdfjs/representation-task-force
- Post about the RDF.js library: https://www.w3.org/community/rdfjs/2018/04/23/rdf-js-the-new-rdf-and-linked-data-javascript-library/
- SimpleRDF repository: https://github.com/simplerdf/simplerdf
- Clownface repository: https://github.com/rdf-ext/clownface