Side note: RDF/XML was the first RDF serialization standardized, over 15
years ago, at a time when XML was all the buzz. Since then other
serializations have been standardized that are far more human friendly
to read and write, and easier for programmers to use, such as Turtle and
JSON-LD.
However, even beyond ease of use, one of the biggest problems with
RDF/XML that I and others have seen over the years is that it misleads
people into thinking that RDF is a dialect of XML, and it is not. I'm
sure this misconception was reinforced by the unfortunate depiction of
XML in the foundation of the (now infamous) semantic web layer cake of
2001, which in hindsight is just plain wrong:
http://www.w3.org/2001/09/06-ecdl/slide17-0.html
(Admittedly JSON-LD may run a similar risk, but I think that risk is
mitigated now by the fact that RDF is already more established in its
own right.)
I encourage all RDF publishers to use one of the other standard RDF
formats such as Turtle or JSON-LD. All commonly used RDF tools now
support Turtle, and many or most already support JSON-LD.
RDF/XML is not officially deprecated, but I personally hope that in the
next round of RDF updates, we will quietly thank RDF/XML for its
faithful service and mark it as deprecated.
David Booth
