Deprecate RDF/XML!

Posted on January 7, 2005 by Richard Cyganiak

Phil Dawes suggests to deprecate RDF/XML. His plan for action:

  • Deprecate RDF/XML as the default serialisation of RDF. Make it clear that it is tricky to write by hand (i.e. by putting this note in the W3C literature), and that if people want human-oriented xml interchange, they should use xml.
  • Develop tools to make it easy to specify a mapping between an xml dialect and RDF triples. For important web xml protocols (atom, rss2) specify some default xml to rdf triple mappings.
  • Promote turtle/n3 as the default human-oriented syntax
  • Reposition RDF as an information integration and knowledge management technology. It really excels at this, more so than any competing technologies (IMHO).
  • Promote one of the other triple-based xml serialisations for embedding rdf directly in XML documents. (e.g. trix or rxr)

I couldn’t agree more. RDF/XML’s goal was to be just like XML with a few rdf:this and rdf:that sprinkled in. In retrospect, it’s obvious that this idea was misguided. RDF/XML is bloated, causes unnecessary confustion and clouds the real point of RDF (the data model, not the serialization).

RDF won’t catch on before RDF/XML is either completely hidden behind widespread APIs, or there’s a practical alternative to RDF/XML in widespread use. Such as TriX, which is my favourite alternative, if only by association with its developers.

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2 Responses to Deprecate RDF/XML!

  1. Rowland says:
    January 7, 2005 at 22:43

    Richard,

    I like TriG even better! I agree RDF/XML is far too bloated, and probably makes people think twice before even thinking about playing around with RDF.

    Cheers,

    Rowland

  2. Richard Cyganiak says:
    January 8, 2005 at 16:08

    TriG is a good human-readable serialization, but not necessarily a good replacement for RDF/XML.

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