Abstract
The
document describes a mapping of the vCard specification (RFC6350) to
RDF/OWL. The goal is to promote the use of vCard for the description of
people and organisations utilising semantic web techniques and allowing
compatibility with traditional vCard implementations.
Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other
documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision
of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports
index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document was published by the Semantic Web Interest
Group as an Interest Group Note.
If you wish to make comments regarding this document, please send them to
semantic-web@w3.org
(subscribe,
archives).
This document updates the W3C Member Submission on vCard RDF [VCARD-MEMBER] to align with the new semantics of IETF RFC6350 [RFC6350] as developed by the IETF vCard Working Group. Note that RFC6350 obsoletes the
previous RFC2426 [RF2426] that the W3 Member Submission was based on.
Publication as an Interest Group Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
The disclosure obligations of the Participants of this group are described in the
charter.
1. Overview
vCard is a specification developed by the IETF for the description
of people and organisations. Recently, vCard has been significantly
updated to Version 4 as documented in [RFC6350]. Typically, vCard objects are encoded in
its own defined text-based syntax or XML renderings.
The objective of this document is to provide an equivalent
representation of vCard utilizing the Semantic Web representations of
RDF/OWL. The goal is to allow compatible representations between
RFC6350 and this vCard Ontololgy.
Previous vCard ontologies, such as the W3C Member Submission on Representing vCard Objects in RDF [VCARD-MEMBER] covered vCard version 3.0 as defined in RFC2426 [RFC2426].
RFC2426 has been obsoleted by RFC6350 and it is recommeded that this
vCard Ontology be used for any vCard semantic representations.
RFC6350 has introduced many additional changes such as new structures
and properties (for example, Kind, Gender, Language, Anniversary,
Calendaring attributes), additional parameters, and removed features
(for example, some Address types, inline vCards, Label). See Appendix A
of [RFC6350] for complete details.
Namespace URI
The current vCard Ontology (See Section 4) has continued to use the
http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns# namespace URI that was used by the previous W3C Member Submission
on Representing vCard Objects in RDF [VCARD-MEMBER].
This will support backwards compatibility. Please note some of the
equivalent/deprecated terms from the previous ontology in Section 2.12.
In addition, this namespace URI will also serve the JSON-LD context.
The vCard specifications have a long history and were first proposed in
1995 and then standardized by the IETF in 1998. Since then, new
vocabularies, such as the FOAF Vocabulary Specification (2005), and
the The Organisation Ontology
(2013) have appeared. The vCard Ontology has also focused on
describing people and organisations, including location information and
groups of such entities. The FOAF ontology focuses more on the
relationships between people, agents, things and social web entities,
and the ORG ontology focuses on organizational structures, roles, and
activities. There are some overlaps between the three ontologies, but
they can provide useful vocabularies individually, and also can
provided enhanced information when used collaboratively.
2. Mapping
In order to create the OWL ontology mapping from RFC6350, some
changes and enhancements are required to reflect and support RDF/OWL
features, linked data principles, and support ontology reuse. No
semantics are changed in the mapping from RFC6350 to the vCard
Ontology. All the data types defined in RFC6350 are fully supported as
XML Schema dataypes.
The model informing the mapping from RFC6350 to OWL has been to
create OWL object properties for all things that would typically be
resources (e.g. identified with a URI) and OWL data properties for all
things
that would typically be literals (e.g. strings and dates). The model
includes naming all the object properties with a "hasX" name pattern,
and the data properties with just the "x" name pattern. However, in
some circumstances (see examples in Property Relation Mechanisms) the
data property may use its equivalent object property to support
vCard's property parameters.
Property Relation Mechanisms
All versions of vCard supported additional property parameters that
could be used with any of the descriptive properties. For example the sort-string and geography
property parameters could be associated with any of the vCard
properties to provide further meta-information. To support vCard's
property parameters, a new object property (hasValue) and data property
(value) have been defined that relates both the property and parameter
to the vCard kind.
Consider the following simple example that only includes direct property relationships:
Direct Example
<vcard:Individual rdf:about="http://example.com/me/corky">
<vcard:fn>Corky Crystal</vcard:fn>
<vcard:nickname>Corks</vcard:nickname>
<vcard:hasEmail rdf:resource="mailto:corky@example.com"/>
</vcard:Individual>
If we wanted to add a sort-as property parameter to the
nickname (data) property and a type property parameter (to indicate a
home email address) to the hasEmail (object) property, then we need to
use the hasNickname object property with the value data property and the hasValue object property with
the hasEmail object property to capture these n-ary relationships, as
shown below:
N-Ary Example
<vcard:Individual rdf:about="http://example.com/me/corky">
<vcard:fn>Corky Crystal</vcard:fn>
<vcard:hasNickname rdf:parseType="Resource">
<vcard:value>Corks</vcard:value>
<vcard:sort-string>cork</vcard:sort-string>
</vcard:hasNickname>
<vcard:hasEmail rdf:parseType="Resource">
<vcard:hasValue rdf:resource="mailto:corky@example.com"/>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#Home"/>
</vcard:hasEmail>
</vcard:Individual>
In general, the direct mechanism provides simpler vCard resources, but
the n-ary mechanism can be used for more detailed vCard resources
requiring property parameters.
Use of rdf:value
In previous vCard/RDF specifications, the use of rdf:value was recommended to support vCard property
parameters. The use of rdf:value is now deprecated in favour of the above mechanism. Additionally, this
enables the current vCard Ontology to support OWL-DL.
The following sections outlines the mapping from RFC6350 to the
vCard Ontology showing both the n-ary Relation and Direct properties.
2.1 Property Parameters
These properties can apply to most vCard properties.
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
|
| LANGUAGE
| The human language used in the related property (from RFC5646)
| language
|
| VALUE
| Not required as this is implicit in the ontology datatypes
|
|
| PREF
| Recommended to use rdf:Seq to support ordered preferences
|
|
| ALTID
| Recommended to use rdf:Alt to support alternative values
|
|
| PID
| Recommended to use rdf:ID to support identified properties
|
|
| TYPE
| Recommended to use rdf:type to indicate type. See Section 2.11 for list of vCard Type
values.
|
|
| MEDIATYPE
| Not required
|
|
| CALSCALE
| Assume the default Gregorian system for datetimes
|
|
| SORT-AS
| The string used for sorting the property
| sort-string
|
| GEO
| The geographic location related to the property value (expressed as a geo URI)
| hasGeo
|
| TZ
| The timezone related to the property value
| tz
|
2.2 General Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Class
| Ontology Property
|
| BEGIN
| Not required
|
|
|
| END
| Not required
|
|
|
| SOURCE
| The orginal source of the vCard information
|
| hasSource
|
| KIND
| vCard defines "Kinds" to represent the types of objects to be represented by vCard:
| Kind
|
|
| Individual - To represent people
| Individual
|
|
| Organization - To represent organisations
| Organization
|
|
| Group - To represent groups of vCard objects
| Group
|
|
| Location - To represent location objects
| Location
|
|
| XML
| Not required
|
|
|
2.3 Identification Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
| N-Ary Property
|
| FN
| The full name of the object (as a single string). This is the only mandatory property.
| fn
| hasFN
|
| N
| The name of the object represented in structured parts
| hasName
(range of class Name)
given-name
family-name
additional-name
honorific-prefix
honorific-suffix
|
hasGivenName
hasFamilyName
hasAdditionalName
hasHonorificPrefix
hasHonorifixSuffix
|
| NICKNAME
| A nickname for the object
| nickname
| hasNickname
|
| PHOTO
|
| hasPhoto
|
|
| BDAY
| Birth date of the object. Should only apply to Individual.
|
bday
|
|
| ANNIVERSARY
| Should only apply to Individual
|
anniversary
|
|
| GENDER
| Should only apply to Individual. See Gender Codes in Section 2.11.
|
hasGender
|
|
2.4 Delivery Addressing
Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
| N-Ary Property
|
| ADR
| The address of the object represented in structured parts
| hasAddress
(range of class Address)
street-address
locality
region
country-name
postal-code
|
hasStreetAddress
hasLocality
hasRegion
hasCountryName
hasPostalCode
|
2.5 Communications Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
| N-Ary Property
|
| TEL
| The telephone number as a tel URI.
Recommended to use rdf:type to indicate the Telephone Type.
See Section 2.11 for list of Telephone Type values.
| hasTelephone
|
|
| EMAIL
| The email address as a mailto URI
| hasEmail
|
|
| IMPP
| The IMPP instant messaging contact information
| hasInstantMessage
|
|
| LANG
| The language of the object
| language
| hasLanguage
|
2.6 Geographical Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
|
| TZ
| The timezone of the object
| tz
|
| GEO
| The geographical coordinates of the object (geo URI)
| hasGeo
|
2.7 Organizational Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
| N-Ary Property |
| TITLE
| The title of the object
| title
| hasTitle
|
| ROLE
| The role of the object
| role
| hasRole
|
| LOGO
| The logo of the object (data URI)
| hasLogo
|
|
| ORG
| The organisation related to the object
| organization-name
| hasOrganizationName
|
| ORGUNIT
| The organisational unit related to the object
| organizational-unit
| hasOrganizationalUnit
|
| MEMBER
| Can only be used for Group Kind objects.
Must point to other Individual or Organization objects.
| hasMember
|
|
| RELATED
| Link to related objects.
Recommended to use rdf:type to indicate the Related Type.
See Section 2.11 for list of Related Type values.
| hasRelated
|
|
2.8 Explanatory Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
| N-Ary Property
|
| CATEGORIES
| The categories of the object
| category
| hasCategory
|
| NOTE
| Notes about the object
| note
| hasNote
|
| PRODID
| The identifier of the product that created the vCard object
|
prodid
|
|
| REV
| The revision datetime of the vCard object
|
rev
|
|
| SOUND
| Audio related to the object (data URI)
| hasSound
|
|
| UID
| A unique identifier for the object
|
hasUID
|
|
| CLIENTPIDMAP
| Not required
|
|
|
| URL
| Any URL related to the object
| hasURL
|
|
| VERSION
| Not required (namespace will capture this)
|
|
|
2.9 Security Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
|
| KEY
| The security key of the object
| hasKey
|
2.10 Calendar Properties
| RFC Property
| Note
| Ontology Property
|
| FBURL
| Calendar Busy Time of the object
| hasCalendarBusy
|
| CALADURI
| Calendar Request of the object
| hasCalendarRequest
|
| CALURI
| Calendar Link of the object
| hasCalendarLink
|
2.11 Type Code Sets
| RFC Property |
OWL Class |
| vCard Type |
Home
Work
|
| Gender |
Female
Male
None
Other
Unknown
|
| Telephone Type |
Cell (mobile)
Fax
Pager
Text (sms)
TextPhone
Video
Voice
|
| Related Type |
Acquaintance
Agent
Child
Colleague
Contact
Coresident
Coworker
Crush
Date
Emergency
Friend
Kin
Me
Met
Muse
Neighbor
Parent
Sibling
Spouse
Sweetheart
|
2.12 Equivalent Terms
The following concepts from the previous vCard Ontology have the following mappings in the current vCard Ontology
| Previous Ontology |
Equivalent (Current Ontology) |
| VCard (Class) |
Kind |
| BBS (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Car (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Dom (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Email (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| ISDN (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Internet (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Intl (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Label (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Modem (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Msg (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| PCS (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Parcel (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Postal (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Pref (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| Tel (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| X400 (Class) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated |
| adr (object property) |
hasAddress |
email (object property)
|
hasEmail
|
| geo (object property) |
hasGeo
|
| key (object property) |
hasKey
|
| logo (object property) |
hasLogo
|
| n (object property) |
hasName
|
| org (object property) |
organization-name
|
| photo (object property) |
hasPhoto
|
| sound (object property) |
hasSound
|
| tel (object property) |
hasTelephone
|
| url (object property) |
hasURL
|
agent (object property)
|
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
class (data property)
|
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| extended-address (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| label (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| latitude (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| longitude (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| mailer (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
| post-office-box (data property) |
NOTE: This concept has been deprecated
|
3. Examples
RDF/XML Example
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:vcard="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#">
<vcard:Individual rdf:about="http://example.com/me/corky">
<vcard:fn>Corky Crystal</vcard:fn>
<vcard:nickname>Corks</vcard:nickname>
<vcard:hasTelephone rdf:parseType="Resource">
<vcard:hasValue rdf:resource="tel:+61755555555"/>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#Home"/>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#Voice"/>
</vcard:hasTelephone>
<vcard:hasEmail rdf:resource="mailto:corky@example.com"/>
<vcard:hasAddress rdf:parseType="Resource">
<vcard:street-address>111 Lake Drive</vcard:street-address>
<vcard:locality>WonderCity</vcard:locality>
<vcard:postal-code>5555</vcard:postal-code>
<vcard:country-name>Australia</vcard:country-name>
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#Home"/>
</vcard:hasAddress>
</vcard:Individual>
</rdf:RDF>
RDFa Example
<div vocab="http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#"
resource="http://example.com/me/corky" typeof="Individual">
<span property="fn">Corky Crystal</span>
<span property="nickname">Corks</span>
<span property="hasTelephone" typeof="Home Voice">
<span property="hasValue" href="tel:+61755555555"/>
</span>
<link property="hasEmail" href="mailto:corky@example.com"/>
<span property="hasAddress" typeof="Home">
<span property="street-address">111 Lake Drive</span>
<span property="locality">WonderCity</span>
<span property="postal-code">5555</span>
<span property="country-name">Australia</span>
</span>
</div>
Turtle Example
@prefix vcard: <http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#> .
@prefix rdfa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/rdfa#> .
<http://example.com/me/corky> a vcard:Individual;
vcard:hasEmail <mailto:corky@example.com>;
vcard:fn "Corky Crystal";
vcard:hasAddress [ a vcard:Home;
vcard:country-name "Australia";
vcard:locality "WonderCity";
vcard:postal-code "5555";
vcard:street-address "111 Lake Drive" ];
vcard:hasTelephone [ a vcard:Home,
vcard:Voice;
vcard:hasValue <tel:+61755555555> ];
vcard:nickname "Corks" .
JSON-LD Example
{
"@context": "http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns",
"@id": "http://example.com/me/corky",
"@type": "Individual",
"fn": "Corky Crystal",
"nickname": "Corks",
"hasEmail": "mailto:corky@example.com",
"hasAddress": {
"@type": "Home",
"country-name": "Australia",
"locality": "WonderCity",
"postal-code": "5555",
"street-address": "111 Lake Drive"
},
"hasTelephone": {
"@type": [ "Home", "Voice" ],
"hasValue": "tel:+61755555555"
}
}
4. Ontology
Classes
IRI: http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#TelephoneType
- is defined by
- http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns
- has sub-classes
- BBSc, Carc, Cellc, Faxc, Modemc, Msgc, PCSc, Pagerc, Textc, Text phonec, Videoc, Voicec
Relation Typec back to ToC or Class ToC
IRI: http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#RelatedType
- is defined by
- http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns
- has sub-classes
- Acquaintancec, Agentc, Childc, Colleaguec, Contactc, Coresidentc, Coworkerc, Crushc, Datec, Emergencyc, Friendc, Kinc, Mec, Metc, Musec, Neighborc, Parentc, Siblingc, Spousec, Sweetheartc
IRI: http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#Type
- is defined by
- http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns
- has sub-classes
- Domc, Homec, ISDNc, Internetc, Intlc, Labelc, Parcelc, Postalc, Prefc, Workc, X400c
Namespace Declarations back to ToC
- default namespace
- http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#
- owl
- http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#
- rdf
- http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
- rdfs
- http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
- vcard
- http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/
- xsd
- http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
A. Change History
Changes since Previous Version (Working Draft 24 Sept 2013)
- Updated the examples of RDFa, Turtle and JSON-LD in section 3 (vcard:hasValue has a literal value which should be a URI as an ObjectProperty)
- Updated JSON text and link to JSON-LD schema at Namespace URI
- Added lang (en) to all labels and comments also add a rdfs:definedBy pointing the ontology itself to every concept
- Removed the deprecated statements, added comment that they have consistently named equivalents, along with equivalentProperty/equivalentClass axioms (only deprecate concpets no longer in RFC6350)
- Added gYear to range for birthdate and anniversary.
B. Acknowledgements
Thanks to member of the W3C Semantic Web Interest Group and the IETF vCard
Working Group for valuable feedback and suggestions; Dan Brickley, Ivan Herman, Michael Angstadt, Adrian Pohl, Dave Reynolds, Brian McBride, Martin Hepp, and Shahim Essaid.
Special thanks to Masahide Kanzaki for feedback on the OWL Ontology and Markus Lanthaler for providing the JSON-LD schema.
The ontology HTML section was obtained by processing the OWL ontology source
code through LODE, Live OWL Documentation
Environment, developed by Silvio
Peroni.
C.
References
- [RFC6350]
- vCard Format Specification. IETF RFC 6350, August 2011 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6350
- [RFC2426]
- vCard MIME Directory Profile. IETF RFC 2426, September 1998 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2426
- [VCARD-MEMBER]
- Representing vCard Objects in RDF. W3C Member Submission, 20 January 2010 http://www.w3.org/Submission/2010/SUBM-vcard-rdf-20100120/
To specify the components of the delivery address for the object