The RML Ontology: A Community-Driven Modular Redesign After a Decade of Experience in Mapping Heterogeneous Data to RDF

Abstract

The Relational to RDF Mapping Language (R2RML) became a W3C Recommendation a decade ago. Despite its wide adoption, its potential applicability beyond relational databases was swiftly explored. As a result, several extensions and new mapping languages were proposed to tackle the limitations that surfaced as R2RML was applied in real-world use cases. Over the years, one of these languages, the RDF Mapping Language (RML), has gathered a large community of contributors, users, and compliant tools. So far, there has been no well-defined set of features for the mapping language, nor was there a consensus-marking ontology. Consequently, it has become challenging for non-experts to fully comprehend and utilize the full range of the language’s capabilities. After three years of work, the W3C Community Group on Knowledge Graph Construction proposes a new specification for RML. This paper presents the new modular RML ontology and the accompanying SHACL shapes that complement the specification. We discuss the motivations and challenges that emerged when extending R2RML, the methodology we followed to design the new ontology while ensuring its backward compatibility with R2RML, and the novel features which increase its expressiveness. The new ontology consolidates the potential of RML, empowers practitioners to define mapping rules for constructing RDF graphs that were previously unattainable, and allows developers to implement systems in adherence with [R2]RML.