Best Practices

The page lists Best Practices for implementing web applications and services that use REST, RDF, and Linked Data. These Best Practices have been developed by IBM workgroups, communities, and mailing lists.

Many Best Practices are currently only available on internal wikis and are hard to find. All Best Practices will be moved to this wiki over time.

RDF Best Practices

• Publish RDF vocabularies
• Make RDF vocabulary documents available for use in queries
• Use URIs to Represent Enumerated values
• Enable users to specify URIs for custom attributes and values
• Use FOAF to identify people and agents
• Use rdfs:label and rdfs:comment in RDF vocabularies
• Be careful with the use of inferencing in RDF vocabularies
• When to use rdfs:label versus dcterms:title
• Use Unicode Normal Form C or KC
• Use of RDF data types
• Use of OSLC Value Type and Representation in Resource Shapes
• How to choose an RDF term for an attribute
• Writing SPARQL Queries that Compensate for Alternate Types of String Literals

REST Best Practices

• Use a Profile to Request Plain Old XML
• Use File Extensions on URIs to Request Specific Content Type Representations of Resources