RDF Access to Relational Data - Workshop Report

The W3C [sponsored / will sponsor] a Workshop in mid-October, 2007, to address the subject of RDF access to relational data. The workshop [did / will] not concern itself with implementation issues such as the use of SQL tables to hold RDF graphs or the transformation of SPARQL queries into SQL language or primitives.

Instead, the Workshop [focused / will focus] on the hows and whys of providing RDF views of relational data—that is, participation of SQL table data in RDF graphs, reasoning, and querying. Another way of rephrasing that would be “making it possible for data stored in SQL tables to be full participants in the Semantic Web”.

The Workshop [only recently completed / has not yet been held] and [little action has been taken to implement its recommendations / its recommendations cannot be guessed], but the community deserves to be informed of the Workshop’s existence and to get a preliminary report of its results. The format of lightning rounds is ideal for such a preliminary report.

Those having large investments in relational data and applications want it to be possible for that data to participate fully in the Semantic Web, if only within their organizations, while active proponents of the Semantic Web know that information of enormous value is available only in relational form.