RDF serves two primary purposes in Mozilla. First, it is a simple, cross-platform database for small data stores. Second, and more importantly, the RDF model is used along with XUL templates as an abstract "API" for displaying information. RDF in 50 words or less is a quick, high-level description of what RDF does in Mozilla. The Back-end Architecture document describes in more detail how Mozilla's RDF implementation works, and gives a quick overview of the interfaces that are involved.

Suppose you're designing an XML application or maybe just writing a DTD or schema. You've followed various best practices about element and attribute names, when to use elements versus attributes, and other design issues, because you want your XML to be useful in the widest variety of situations.

The creation of RDF raises the prospect of a widely accepted standard for representing expressive declarative knowledge on the Web. However, just representing knowledge and information is not enough: users as well as information agents have to query and use the data in several ways. An RDF Query specification would allow a range of applications to exploit any information source which can be represented in terms of the RDF data model.

This is a project to investigate the integration of Z39.50 search capabilities with Mozilla's RDF-based information management environment.

RQL is a typed language following a functional approach (a la ODMG-OQL) and supports generalized path expressions (GPEs) featuring variables on both labels for nodes (i.e., classes) and edges (i.e., properties). RQL relies on a formal graph model (as opposed to other triple-based RDF QLs ) that captures the RDF modeling primitives and permits the interpretation of superimposed resource descriptions by means of one or more schemas.

The History of RDF Sometime in the mid-nineties, a guy named Ramanathan V. Guha (everyone calls him Guha because they're scared of “Ramanathan,” go figure) went to work for Apple Computer. He cooked up this metadata format named Meta Content Framework (MCF), and then they built a cool app called Hotsauce, driven by MCF, that represented web sites as little 3-D planetary systems and you could fly around theml. Cool, as I said, but it didn't change the world.

This document defines an abstract syntax on which RDF is based, and which serves to link its concrete syntax to its formal semantics. It also includes discussion of design goals, meaning of RDF documents, key concepts, datatyping, character normalization and handling of URI references.

The UML community developed a set of useful models for representing static and dynamic components of software-intensive systems. UML is an industry standard and serves as a modeling basis for emerging standards in other areas like OIM, CWM etc. As of today there exist a variety of UML vocabularies for describing object models, datatypes, database schemas, transformations etc.

RDF follows a property-centric approach. Let the syntax reflect it. Every XML tag encountered during processing is considered to be a property name, unless explicitly overriden. For a tag to be a class name, it must carry the XML attribute rdf:instance.

This document identifies and defines the status of issues considered by the RDFCore Working Group. It is a working document, and as such is subject to constant change as the WG proceeds.

The RDF calendar taskforce is an informal grouping of individuals interested in calendaring and scheduling, primarily in RDF. Through scenario-lead discussion by email and irc, the taskforce will aim to draft an RDF schema for calendar events. It will also aim to demonstrate the use of RDF in a calendaring and scheduling context.

Over recent months, members of the www-rdf-interest mailing list have been working at creating practical applications of RDF technology. Notable among these efforts have been Dan Connolly's work with using XSLT to generate RDF from web pages, and R.V. Guha's lightweight RDF database project.

Topic maps and RDF originate from two standards organizations, ISO and the W3C respectively, that have traditionally been regarded as competitors. This accounts to some extent for the tendency among the uninformed to regard topic maps and RDF as competitors. Our position is that it makes more sense to regard topic maps and RDF as complementary, and to look for ways of realizing the potential synergies between the two. Ontopia has clearly demonstrated this potential through its use of RDF (under the covers, as it were) in the automated generation of topic maps.

Many Semantic Web advocates have gone out of their way to disassociate their visions and projects from the Artificial Intelligence moniker. No surprise, since the AI label has been the kiss of, if not death, at least scorn, since Lisp machines were frozen out of the marketplace during the great "AI winter" of the mid-1980s. Lisp still suffers from its association with the AI label, though it does well by being connected with the actual technologies.

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) integrates a variety of applications from library catalogs and world-wide directories to syndication and aggregation of news, software, and content to personal collections of music, photos, and events using XML as an interchange syntax. See http://www.w3.org/RDF/ for details.

The world of the semantic web, as based on RDF, is really simple at the base. This article shows you how to get started. It uses a simplified teaching language -- Notation 3 or N3 -- which is basically equivalent to RDF in its XML syntax, but easier to scribble when getting started.

RDF is like my eccentric old uncle. I don't know him as well as I'd like, which is partly his fault, since his eccentricities can be off-putting. Of course they're what make him so interesting and are the reason I want to get to know him better in the first place. Yeah, RDF is just like that.

This page summarizes some current approaches to storing RDF in a relational database. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR COMMENTS, so please do contribute your ideas (www-rdf-interest@w3.org)! To goal is to come up with the best way of storing RDF in a relational database, or identify a set of solutions that are suitable for particular needs.

Let me now explain what this document is for. It isn't intended to replace either Tim's high-level explanation, or the detailed formalism of the draft. Instead, it attempts to explain RDF from the simple cases to the general cases rather than the other way around. After reading this document, you should know how to encode Properties in XML in a way that complies with RDF.

Edd Dumbill explores an XML and RDF application known as Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF). FOAF allows the expression of personal information and relationships, and is a useful building block for creating information systems that support online communities. Code samples demonstrate the basics.