W3C announced today a RDF Validation Workshop - Practical Assurances for Quality RDF Data, 10-11 September 2013, in Cambridge, USA. The Semantic Web has demonstrated considerable value for collaborative contributions to data. Adoption in many mission-critical environments requires data to conform to specified patterns. Validation in a banking context shares many requirements with quality assurance of linked clinical data. Systems like Linked Open Data, which don't have formal interface specifications, share these validation needs. Most data representation languages used in conventional settings offer some sort of input validation, ranging from parsing grammars for domain-specific languages to XML Schema or RelaxNG for XML structures. While the distributed nature of RDF affects the notions of "validity", tool chains need to be established to ensure data integrity. The goal of this workshop is to discuss use cases for data validation on the Semantic Web with development of technologies to enable those use cases. W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 30 June 2013.

The XML Query Working Group and the XSLT Working Group have published a new version of the Candidate Recommendation of XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 3.0. The new version reflects changes and clarifications that have been made during the CR period, primarily as a result of feedback from implementors outside the two Working Groups. The document describes various functions and operators that work on XML Schema-compatible data types for use in XPath, XSLT, XQuery, XQueryX, SPARQL and other languages. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 enhances the foundation to integrate automated processing of human language into core Web technologies. ITS 2.0 provides metadata to foster the adoption of the multilingual Web. The draft reflects all changes since the first last call publication. Comments are welcome through 11 June. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

W3C announced today a Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business, 7-8 August 2013, in San Francisco, USA. The event is hosted by AppFusions, sponsored by IBM, and jointly organized with the OpenSocial Foundation. The goal of this workshop is to bring together social business experts and social technology experts to discuss the use-cases that existing specifications and standards don't adequately address, and understand where new standards are needed. This Workshop is open in particular to social business leaders and strategists, federated and decentralized social Web technologists, security experts, and developers. W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 1 July 2013.