A nanopass Approach to a Modular RDF Implementation (to appear)

Abstract

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a widespread W3C standard defining a domain-specific language for knowledge representation, providing a platform to build higher-level languages such as OWL or SHACL. RDF concrete syntaxes define an external representation of its abstract model for data interchange. Despite sharing the same core semantics, RDF concrete syntaxes differ in how well they support common modelling idioms at the surface level. Many RDF libraries have been implemented in Scheme, however, they support few concrete syntaxes and/or do not exhibit compliance with the W3C test suites.

This paper contributes a new open-source RDF 1.1 implementation for R6RS Scheme, leveraging nanopass. The improved flexibility of the approach in a Scheme-based environment is shown by the ability to reuse transformations across three RDF concrete syntaxes, and its practicality towards real-world interchange is demonstrated through experimental compliance with the W3C standards.