Updating terminology: RDFX --> XDI RDF

Several suggestions have come up with regard to terminology around the RDFX proposal, and since we’re early in this new branch of XDI thinking, it’s a good time to improve it.

First, both Laurie Rae and Paul Trevithick have suggested that RDFX may not be a good name for the proposed data model because it suggests it may just be: a) a slight tweak of RDF, B) a new RDF serialization format, or c) adding XRIs to standard RDF (which was the original inspiration for the term). But Paul points out that RDFX is really more than that, because it defines a basic RDF vocabulary (the core verbs) that is reflected directly in the composition of XDI XRIs.

So in the V3 proposal I uploaded today I changed the name of the data model to XDI RDF.

Second, since Andy and Steve and Laurie and I found that we need a term for talking about the data model behind the v17 and v18 XDI schemas in comparison with the XDI RDF model, we came up with “3-layer model”. So now we can talk about the XDI RDF model and 3-layer model and be clear what we mean.

Third, ever since we starting discussing the XDI RDF model and explaining that four XDI RDF verbs have clear English language equivalents, a consistent suggestion (most recently from Paul) has been to simply make them the English words, i.e.:

Replace With

---------------- -----------

$ref $is

$ref$object $is$a

$link $has

$link$object $has$a

When I first tried in the example XDI RDF tables, I didn’t think it was “rigourous” enough. However the more I tried it the more it made sense, so the latest version of the XDI RDF proposal (V3) uses them. Download it and see what you think:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/22472/xdi-rdf-model-v3.pdf

Lastly, see my reply to Bill about changing $data to $type per his suggestion.

=Drummond

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