My Response to 'The Future of RDF Standards'

nathan — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:20:17 +0000

Thought I may as well post my response to the future of rdf survey that's going on - all of this can be summed up in the comments at the bottom though, that's what I really think should happen.

What do you like about RDF?
The triple, (dereferencable) URIs as identifiers, use of ontologies/schemas, ^^typed literals, various different serializations.

What do you dislike about RDF?
documentation is pretty much serialization specific (RDF/XML) should be serialization independent
reification, bags and sequences in the rdf/xml specification
subject and object definitions do not match (lack of literal subjects, lack of collections in the subject position, lack of graph literals)

Most Important Addition to RDF
subject and object both taking the same values (literal subjects), graph literals, collections in the subject position, and variables allowed even if not supported by specific or existing serializations.

Tidy up RDFS and add in much needed values which currently reside in owl and a few other ontologies - RDF should come with a base vocab that covers most rdf specific needs.

Priorities
* Make RDF smaller/simpler: [ No opinion ]
* Make RDF larger/more powerful: [ No opinion ]
* Redesign some parts of the RDF/XML syntax : [ No opinion ]
* Redesign some parts of the RDF model: [ 5 +++++ (highest) ]
* Improve RDF's suitability for data/database work: [ 1 + (lowest) ]
* Improve RDF's suitability for semantic/KR work: [ 1 + (lowest) ]
* Provide better syntaxes for RDF: [ 5 +++++ (highest) ]
* Provide better documentation: [ 5 +++++ (highest) ]
* Explain the business case better: [ No opinion ]
* Provide better communication, community support: [ No opinion ]
* Help people find or develop RDF vocabularies: [ 4 ++++ ]
* Develop more compelling applications: [ No opinion ]
* Develop standard vocabularies: [ 5 +++++ (highest) ]
* Work on RDF Security: [ No opinion ]
* Work on RDF Trust & Provenance: [ 3 +++ ]
* Work on Synchronization, Distribution, and Versioning of RDF Data: [ 3+++ ]
* Work on bridging between RDF and XML: [ 1 + (lowest) ]
* Standardize RDF API in Javascript: [ 5 +++++ (highest) ]
* Standardize RDF APIs in other languages: [ No opinion ]

re: Improve RDF's suitability for X, if you improve the model this should happen automatically.

re: Make RDF smaller/simpler/larger/more powerful, again this is conflating issues, RDF should be looser so that serializations can tighten up by supporting certain features.

re: trust, provenance, synchronisation, distribution, versioning - imho this is all out of scope, work could begin on this if the model was loosened up to be more n3-like (graph literals); get the model right and these headaches become much easier to handle.

re: backwards compatibility, this should be a non issue as any looser definition of RDF can be countered by defining existing serializations as including a subset of RDF's features - to limit the next decade based on the mistakes or lessons learned from the last decade is, imho, unethical.

Add Core Support for Working With Multiple Graphs
graph literals, anything else is a work-around imho. if graph literals +5 in every respect, else, meh.

Create a Standard JSON RDF Syntax
critical imho, unsure if it should come under this working group though.. but if it's the only place and time then here it must be, as RDF/JSON is the most important serialization for the next decade of the web, easily.

Make Turtle a W3C Standard
great yes, but only after getting the core model sorted out, tweaking turtle to handle the changes (should be v easy given n3 heritage) then standardize under separate cover if possible - else, if not possible under separate cover, then imho must happen - the "why not" train of thinking comes to mind. Turtle *should* already be a standard.

Indicate Which RDF Features Are No Longer Best Practice
either deprecate them or leave them be, "weak deprecation" is nothing more than politics; keeping them for BC and allowing a new generation to use them a poor choice imho, deprecate them, mark them as deprecated, then if implementation want to be backwards compatible they still can (and probably are).

Extend RDF/XML
would much rather see RDF defined without any changes to serializations, let serializations conform and revise under separate cover.

Revise Semantics for Blank Nodes
this issue is imo nothing to do with RDF (indicates a problem in sparql).

Create Standards for Deployment of Linked Data
great idea but nothing to do with RDF core imho and would add way to much scope. can't rate it as a +5 because I view it as orthogonal.

Define Some Useful Similarity/Equivalence Properties
100% behind this one, as per J Hendler's RDFS3 proposal - nigh on critical to the wider community moving forwards.

Define a Namespace Packaging Mechanism
personally view it as a bell and whistle proposal, v low priority imho - however loosening the rdf spec to all namespaces to be either included or pointed to in order to allow future work like this would be a good idea.

Change RDF Semantics to Plain Data (SPARQL) Style
I'd just remove this from consideration if possible.

Explain How to Determine What a URI Means
? give something a uri, describe it with RDF, consult that RDF to read it's description, meaning is different in every context and.. unsure why this is on the list tbh.

Allow Literals as Subjects
+5, must happen imho.

Improve Integration with Syndication Systems (Atom)
it should be easy enough, indeed it's already possible - but syndication should and could be done with RDF, lack of graph literals pretty much makes RDF a no-go area in the message space, which is sad..

Other Comments?
IMHO, TimBL (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDF-Future.html) and Jim Hendler (http://www.w3.org/2009/12/rdf-ws/papers/ws31) have everything covered in their proposals, I completely fail to understand why these two proposals aren't just done as they cover everything and are imho golden.

If I could click my fingers and decide what happened, I'd get everybody working on making the changes outlined by TimBL and Jim Hendler, then get a group on to doing RDF/JSON under supervision of Sandro Hawke, Manu Sporny and possibly Jeni T. Get Turtle aligned with the changes (should be an easy hit) then clean up RDF/XML and define it as supporting a subset of RDF. Quite sure this won't happen though and I'll be completely confused as to why not.

webr3.org » Reification

My Response to 'The Future of RDF Standards'

Reading List : Web, Linked Data, REST, Semantic Web

Web, HTTP and REST

Linked Data and the Semantic Web