What’s New in RDF 1.2

W3C Group Draft Note

More details about this document
This version:
https://www.w3.org/TR/2023/DNOTE-rdf12-new-20230504/
Latest published version:
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-new/
Latest editor's draft:
https://w3c.github.io/rdf-new/spec/
History:
https://www.w3.org/standards/history/rdf12-new
Commit history
Latest Recommendation:
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-new
Editor:
Ora Lassila
Former editor:
David Wood
Feedback:
GitHub w3c/rdf-new (pull requests, new issue, open issues)
public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org with subject line [rdf12-new] … message topic … (archives)

Abstract

This document provides the reader with a summary of changes to RDF introduced in RDF version 1.2.

Status of This Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document is intended to provide the reader with a summary of changes to RDF introduced in RDF version 1.2.

This document was published by the RDF-star Working Group as a Group Draft Note using the Note track.

Group Draft Notes are not endorsed by W3C nor its Members.

This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

The W3C Patent Policy does not carry any licensing requirements or commitments on this document.

This document is governed by the 2 November 2021 W3C Process Document.

1. Introduction

This document is informative in nature. Its purpose is to provide a summary of differences between RDF versions 1.1 and 1.2 and to introduce new additions in a very brief manner.

Readers new to RDF should start with the RDF 1.2 Primer [RDF12-PRIMER] and then move on to the specifications in which they are most interested. This document is meant to serve as a guide for those already familiar with RDF 1.1 who wish to understand changes in version 1.2.

Normative specifications of RDF can be found in the following documents:

The following prefixes are used in this document:

Prefixes and IRIs
Namespace prefixNamespace IRIRDF vocabulary
rdf http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# The RDF built-in vocabulary [RDF12-SCHEMA]
xsd http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema# The RDF-compatible XML Schema datatypes

2. Abstract Syntax

3. New Serialization Formats

RDF 1.1 introduces a number of new serialization formats. RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax makes it clear that RDF/XML is no longer the only recommended serialization format; RDF itself should be considered to be the data model (the abstract syntax), not any particular serialization.

Figure 1 RDF 1.0 and 1.1 serialization formats

4. Semantics

Most of the changes between RDF and RDF 1.1 do not have any effect on implementations of entailment.

Datatype entailment formally refers to a set of 'recognized' datatypes, replacing datatype maps in RDF 1.0 Semantics, but this does not have any effect on implementation.

Datatype entailment formally refers to a set of 'recognized' datatype IRIs. The RDF 1.0 Semantics used the concept of a datatype map: in the new semantic description, this is the mapping from recognized IRIs to the datatypes they identify. This change does not have any effect on implementation or semantic entailments.

RDF entailment has two required datatypes xsd:string and rdf:langString which must be recognized, but this doesn't appreciably add to RDF entailment as these two datatypes replace plain literals.

One change that does affect entailment is that graphs containing invalid literals (e.g., "a"^^xsd:integer) are immediately inconsistent for recognized datatypes, even in sub-RDFS entailment regimes.

RDF 1.1 includes RDF Datasets. However, the semantics of RDF Datasets in RDF 1.1 is minimal and entailment per se is only defined on RDF graphs so there are no changes here.

A. Acknowledgments

A.1 Acknowledgments for RDF 1.1

This section is non-normative.

The editor gratefully acknowledges the members of the RDF Working Group who contributed to this document, including Richard Cyganiak, Gavin Garothers, Pat Hayes, Sandro Hawke, Gregg Kellogg, Markus Lanthaler, Peter Patel-Schneider, Eric Prud-hommeaux, Guus Schreiber and Manu Sporny.

The membership of the RDF Working Group included Thomas Baker, Scott Bauer, Dan Brickley, Gavin Carothers, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Olivier Corby, Richard Cyganiak, Souripriya Das, Ian Davis, Lee Feigenbaum, Fabien Gandon, Charles Greer, Alex Hall, Steve Harris, Sandro Hawke, Pat Hayes, Ivan Herman, Nicholas Humfrey, Kingsley Idehen, Gregg Kellogg, Markus Lanthaler, Arnaud Le Hors, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Eric Prud'hommeaux, Yves Raimond, Nathan Rixham, Guus Schreiber, Andy Seaborne, Manu Sporny, Thomas Steiner, Ted Thibodeau, Mischa Tuffield, William Waites, Jan Wielemaker, David Wood, Zhe Wu, and Antoine Zimmermann.

A.2 Acknowledgments for RDF 1.2

This section is non-normative.

In addition to the editors, the following people have contributed to this specification: Gregg Kellogg and Pierre-Antoine Champin

Members of the RDF-star Working Group Group included Adrian Gschwend, Andy Seaborne, Antoine Zimmermann, Dan Brickley, David Chaves-Fraga, Dominik Tomaszuk, Dörthe Arndt, Enrico Franconi, Fabien Gandon, Gregg Kellogg, Gregory Williams, Jesse Wright, Julián Arenas-Guerrero, Olaf Hartig, Ora Lassila, Pasquale Lisena, Peter Patel-Schneider, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Raphaël Troncy, Ruben Taelman, Rémi Ceres, Sarven Capadisli, Souripriya Das, Ted Thibodeau, and Timothée Haudebourg.

Editor's note

Recognize members of the Task Force? Not an easy to find list of contributors.

B. References

B.1 Informative references

[JSON-LD11]
JSON-LD 1.1. Gregg Kellogg; Pierre-Antoine Champin; Dave Longley. W3C. 16 July 2020. W3C Recommendation. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11/
[RDF12-CONCEPTS]
RDF 1.2 Concepts and Abstract Syntax. Richard Cyganiak; David Wood; Markus Lanthaler. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-concepts/spec/
[RDF12-N-QUADS]
RDF 1.2 N-Quads. Gavin Carothers. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-n-quads/spec/
[RDF12-N-TRIPLES]
RDF 1.2 N-Triples. Gavin Carothers; Andy Seaborne. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-n-triples/spec/
[RDF12-PRIMER]
RDF 1.2 Primer. Guus Schreiber; Yves Raimond. W3C. DNOTE. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-primer/spec/
[RDF12-SCHEMA]
RDF 1.2 Schema. Dan Brickley; Ramanathan Guha. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-schema/spec/
[RDF12-SEMANTICS]
RDF 1.2 Semantics. Patrick Hayes; Peter Patel-Schneider. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-semantics/spec/
[RDF12-TRIG]
RDF 1.2 TriG. Gavin Carothers; Andy Seaborne. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-trig/spec/
[RDF12-TURTLE]
RDF 1.2 Turtle. Eric Prud'hommeaux; Gavin Carothers. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-turtle/spec/
[RDF12-XML]
RDF 1.2 XML Syntax. Fabien Gandon; Guus Schreiber. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/rdf-xml/spec/
[RDFA-PRIMER]
RDFa 1.1 Primer - Third Edition. Ivan Herman; Ben Adida; Manu Sporny; Mark Birbeck. W3C. 17 March 2015. W3C Working Group Note. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-primer/
[SPARQL12-CONCEPTS]
SPARQL 1.2 Concepts. The W3C RDF-star Working Group. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-concepts/spec/
[SPARQL12-ENTAILMENT]
SPARQL 1.2 Entailment Regimes. Birte Glimm; Chimezie Ogbuji. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-entailment/spec/
[SPARQL12-FEDERATED-QUERY]
SPARQL 1.2 Federated Query. Eric Prud'hommeaux; Carlos Buil Aranda. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-federated-query/spec/
[SPARQL12-GRAPH-STORE-PROTOCOL]
SPARQL 1.2 Graph Store HTTP Protocol. Chimezie Ogbuji. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-graph-store-protocol/spec/
[SPARQL12-NEW]
What’s New in SPARQL 1.2. The W3C RDF-star Working Group. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-new/spec/
[SPARQL12-PROTOCOL]
SPARQL 1.2 Protocol. Lee Feigenbaum; Gregory Williams; Kendall Clark; Elias Torres. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-protocol/spec/
[SPARQL12-QUERY]
SPARQL 1.2 Query Language. Steven Harris; Andy Seaborne. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-query/spec/
[SPARQL12-RESULTS-CSV-TSV]
SPARQL 1.2 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats. Andy Seaborne. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-results-csv-tsv/spec/
[SPARQL12-RESULTS-JSON]
SPARQL 1.2 Query Results JSON Format. Andy Seaborne. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-results-json/spec/
[SPARQL12-RESULTS-XML]
SPARQL 1.2 Query Results XML Formats. Sandro Hawke; Dave Beckett; Jeen Broekstra. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-results-xml/spec/
[SPARQL12-SERVICE-DESCRIPTION]
SPARQL 1.2 Service Description. Gregory Williams. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-service-description/spec/
[SPARQL12-UPDATE]
SPARQL 1.2 Update. Paula Gearon; Alexandre Passant; Axel Polleres. W3C. W3C Working Draft. URL: https://w3c.github.io/sparql-update/spec/