What is RDF?
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a technology standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for formulating logical statements about resources. These statements are made in triples of subject, predicate, and object. E.g.: a product class (subject) is described by (predicate) a property (object). Such a set of triples can be retrieved in different serializations as a file or via services or queried with further query languages matching this technology (e.g. SPARQL). RDF also forms the basic technology for Knowledge Graphs.
Read more: ECLASS as RDF? - An overview
The Specification
After several revision and feedback loops, ECLASS e.V will publish the first official ECLASS as an RDF specification with all ECLASS structural elements. It will be the first part of a specification series and forming the basis for the RDF use cases. The specification defines how to transport ECLASS content in RDF. This allows the usage of ECLASS in W3C Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description (TD), AAS as RDF and many more. To validate product description according to ECLASS in RDF, for instance SHACL Shapes are a standardized approach to validate rules. This will be part two of this series and will allow many use cases. For instance, it allows the check of the correct ECLASS usage or the completeness of a product description.
