ISO 3166 RDF Representation

Latest version:: http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/
This version:: http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/2005-12-23.html
Previous version:: http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/2005-12-13.html
Author:: Earle Martin

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. This copyright applies to the ISO 3166 RDF Representation documentation and does not apply to the ISO 3166 RDF Representation data formats, vocabulary terms, or technology. Regarding underlying technology, the ISO 3166 RDF Representation relies heavily on W3C's RDF technology, an open Web standard that can be freely used by anyone.

Abstract

This resource acts as a simple representation of the ISO 3166 definitions of country names.

Usage

Following is an example of a simple RDF document, using WAIL and this vocabulary, referencing the United Kingdom.

<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:dc   = "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:rdf  = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:wail = "http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/2002/wail/"
>

<rdf:Description>
  <dc:title>Something</dc:title>
  <wail:locatedIn>
    <wail:Country rdf:about="http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/countries#GB" />
  </wail:locatedIn>
</rdf:Description>

</rdf:RDF>

Note the URI pointing to the fragment of the schema that represents the United Kingdom. The country IDs should be referred to in uppercase (in this case, "GB").

Defining schema

The list of countries is defined using a simple RDF schema. It has one class, Country, whose properties are:

name: The ISO 3166 name of the country, in English or French.
alpha_2: The country's ISO 3166 alpha-2 (two-letter alphabetic) identifier.
alpha_3: The country's ISO 3166 alpha-3 (three-letter alphabetic) identifier.

Here is an example block from the definitions, describing the United Kingdom.

  <Country rdf:ID="GB">
    <name xml:lang="en">United Kingdom</name>
    <name xml:lang="fr">Royaume-Uni</name>
    <alpha_2>GB</alpha_2>
    <alpha_3>GBR</alpha_3>
  </Country>

To see the full list, see the full definition file.

Changes since last version

At the suggestion of Nicolas Kessner, to avoid validation issues and generally make things simpler, the definitions have been moved out of the source of this page into a separate file. This accordingly means that URIs for country definitions have changed from (for example) http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/#GB to http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-3166/countries#GB. The URIs should not change again, unless persistent URIs are acquired; in which case the old URIs will be redirected accordingly and will not break.

Acknowledgements

Parts of the layout of this document and the licensing information were adapted from the FOAF Vocabulary Specification by Dan Brickley and Libby Miller.