vCard Ontology

What it is — A W3C Interest Group Note mapping vCard RFC 6350 to RDF/OWL for describing people and organizations with Semantic Web techniques. Its goal is compatibility between semantic vCard representations and traditional vCard implementations without changing RFC 6350 semantics.

Key concepts —

• The ontology keeps the http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns# namespace for backward compatibility and also uses it as the JSON-LD context.
• URI-like resources are generally represented by OWL object properties named hasX, while literals such as strings and dates use data properties named x.
• Direct properties provide simpler resources; hasValue/value support n-ary structures when vCard property parameters require added metadata.
• Mapped kinds include Individual, Organization, Group, and Location; mapped fields cover identification, addresses, communications, geography, organizations, explanatory data, security keys, and calendar links.

How you’d use it — Represent contact data as RDF using the documented classes and properties, choosing direct relationships for simple values and n-ary relationships for parameterized values. The note supplies equivalent examples in RDF/XML, RDFa, Turtle, and JSON-LD, plus mapping tables from RFC 6350 properties.

LLM angle — none stated

Pitfalls & lessons — The note deprecates rdf:value for property parameters in favor of hasValue/value, and lists numerous deprecated or mapped terms from the previous ontology. Some RFC parameters are represented through general RDF mechanisms such as rdf:type, rdf:Seq, rdf:Alt, or rdf:ID, while others are unnecessary or assumed by the ontology.

Verdict — A detailed interoperability mapping for publishing RFC 6350-style contact information in RDF/OWL, with explicit migration guidance and serialization examples.

Sources consulted

• https://www.w3.org/TR/vcard-rdf/