serialisation issue

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Bohms, H.M. (Michel)

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Mar 16, 2020, 6:08:18 AM3/16/20
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Dear all,

 

In our ISO ICDD workgroup currently RDF/XML is prescribed as the only allowed RDF serialisation.

As Dutch delegation we try to flex that to ...”or any equivalent RDF-serialisation with W3C recommendation status like Turtle or JSON-LD”.

 

Do you have any arguments for us trying to accomplish that. We have the feeling that most people are using Turtle in practice, not RDF/XML despite its historic status as the main spec that RDF comliant software should support.

 

Thx a lot,

Michel

 

 

 

Dr. ir. H.M. (Michel) Böhms
Senior Data Scientist

T +31888663107
M +31630381220
E michel...@tno.nl

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dprice

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Mar 16, 2020, 7:02:28 AM3/16/20
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What is this … 1998? I’m surprised anyone in 2020 would suggest *only* XML for anything.  

RDF is a graph, XML is a hierarchy - isn’t that enough rationale? If not, then ….

All serious RDF tools can read/write all the standard serialisations, so no reason for a committee to make any decision on this topic for users and developers. Today, many consider the XML form as just a legacy since RDF is circa 2004. TopQuadrant does not recommend RDF/XML to customers.

RDF/XML is by far the most verbose and slowest to parse - and that fact is old news.  I reported the following in the EU V-Con project in Nov 2016 when this question came up:
  • OTL being used was 347K triples. 
  • TopBraid Composer 5.1.4 allocated with 4GB memory
  • Open it as TTL in 7-8 seconds. 
  • Open it as JSON-LD - roughly the same as TTL
  • Open it as RDF/XML in 37-39 seconds.
  • RDF/XML file is double the size on disk vs the TTL.
Also here’s a typical quote from an RDF-based blog with a sensible analysis of all the formats (full disclosure I share the “most despised” view wrt RDF/XML):


RDF/XML

The first and perhaps most well-known RDF serialization format is RDF/XML. It’s also the most despised. Many systems were able to parse, store and serialize XML when RDF was invented almost 20 years ago, so RDF/XML seemed like a logical default.

Unfortunately, RDF/XML is a weird mixture of two fundamentally different concepts: a tree-like document, and a triple-based graph. This makes RDF/XML conceptually difficult and quite verbose, compared to other standards. For XML developers, it might look familiar, but since it does not clearly reflect the triple model, it will probably cause confusion.

Use it only if you really need to work with XML.

Check out the comments on the other serialisations too (N-Triples for fast parsing of very large files using compressions during interchange, Turtle for simple and editable, JSON-LD for Web, etc)

Cheers,
David


On 16 Mar 2020, at 10:08, 'Bohms, H.M. (Michel)' via TopBraid Suite Users <topbrai...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear all,
 
In our ISO ICDD workgroup currently RDF/XML is prescribed as the only allowed RDF serialisation.
As Dutch delegation we try to flex that to ...”or any equivalent RDF-serialisation with W3C recommendation status like Turtle or JSON-LD”.
 
Do you have any arguments for us trying to accomplish that. We have the feeling that most people are using Turtle in practice, not RDF/XML despite its historic status as the main spec that RDF comliant software should support.
 
Thx a lot,
Michel
 
 
Dr. ir. H.M. (Michel) Böhms
Senior Data Scientist

This message may contain information that is not intended for you. If you are not the addressee or if this message was sent to you by mistake, you are requested to inform the sender and delete the message. TNO accepts no liability for the content of this e-mail, for the manner in which you use it and for damage of any kind resulting from the risks inherent to the electronic transmission of messages.
 
 
 
 

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Bohms, H.M. (Michel)

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Mar 16, 2020, 7:33:25 AM3/16/20
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Thank you David for the feedback and links!

Very helpful in our process...

 

 

The strongest counterargument we hear is from the owl spec:

“

2.2 Syntaxes

In practice, a concrete syntax is needed in order to store OWL 2 ontologies and to exchange them among tools and applications. The primary exchange syntax for OWL 2 is RDF/XML [RDF Syntax]; this is indeed the only syntax that must be supported by all OWL 2 tools (see Section 2.1 of the OWL 2 Conformance document [OWL 2 Conformance]).

Thx for any counter-counter....

Michel

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. ir. H.M. (Michel) Böhms
Senior Data Scientist

T +31888663107
M +31630381220
E michel...@tno.nl

Location

 

dprice

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Mar 16, 2020, 9:07:36 AM3/16/20
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On 16 Mar 2020, at 11:33, 'Bohms, H.M. (Michel)' via TopBraid Suite Users <topbrai...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 
Thank you David for the feedback and links!
Very helpful in our process...
 
 
The strongest counterargument we hear is from the owl spec:
“

2.2 Syntaxes

In practice, a concrete syntax is needed in order to store OWL 2 ontologies and to exchange them among tools and applications. The primary exchange syntax for OWL 2 is RDF/XML [RDF Syntax]; this is indeed the only syntax that must be supported by all OWL 2 tools (see Section 2.1 of the OWL 2 Conformance document [OWL 2 Conformance]).


As counter to that counter, ask proponents to list the tools that support ONLY RDF/XML vs the list of tools that support Turtle. I can’t think of any so my guess that first list has length zero.

Note that the OWL 2 spec is 8 years old (2012) so is outdated. JSON-LD didn’t even exist at that stage as 1.0 appeared in 2014.

Repeating myself … no user, developer or tool provider wants any committee to try to stop them from using whatever serialisation is best for their use case.

Cheers,
David

Thx for any counter-counter....
Michel
 
 
Dr. ir. H.M. (Michel) Böhms
Senior Data Scientist

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