Resource Description Framework - History

History

There were several ancestors to the W3C's RDF. Technically the closest was MCF, a project initiated by Ramanathan V. Guha while at Apple Computer and continued, with contributions from Tim Bray, during his tenure at Netscape Communications Corporation. Ideas from the Dublin Core community, and from PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection (the W3C's early Web content labelling system) were also key in shaping the direction of the RDF project.

The W3C published a specification of RDF's data model and XML syntax as a Recommendation in 1999. Work then began on a new version that was published as a set of related specifications in 2004. While there are a few implementations based on the 1999 Recommendation that have yet to be completely updated, adoption of the improved specifications has been rapid since they were developed in full public view, unlike some earlier technologies of the W3C. Most newcomers to RDF are unaware that the older specifications even exist.

In June 2010, W3C organized a workshop to gather feedback from the Web community and discuss possible revisions and improvements to RDF.

Some libraries published their catalogue in RDF, one of them the Hungarian Széchényi Library.

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