ShEx
Shape Expressions Language
Judgement: Assess
RDF shape validation parallel to SHACL; smaller community.
Concise, human-friendly grammar for describing the expected shape of RDF graphs. Used to validate that linked data conforms to a target schema before publishing or ingesting it.
Originated alongside SHACL during the W3C RDF Data Shapes Working Group. The two specs solve overlapping problems with different design choices: ShEx prioritises a compact ShExC syntax and recursive shape definitions; SHACL prioritises RDF-native rule expression.
Why this is listed as niche
RDF shape-validation language that pre-dates and parallels SHACL. Adoption is concentrated in linked-data communities (Wikidata, biomedical knowledge graphs); SHACL — being a W3C Recommendation rather than a Community Group spec — is the more common pick in mainstream contexts.
At a glance
- Category
- Semantics
- Governance
- W3C Shape Expressions Community Group
- Status
- Stable; ShEx 2.1 current
- First released
- 2017
Links
Related standards
Other standards in Semantics.
- DCAT — Data Catalog Vocabulary
- JSON-LD — JSON for Linking Data
- RDF/OWL — Resource Description Framework / Web Ontology Language
- SHACL — Shapes Constraint Language
- SKOS — Simple Knowledge Organization System
- OSI — Open Semantic Interchange
- schema.org — schema.org vocabulary
See ShEx in context
Open the interactive Data Landscape to compare ShEx against every other open standard, or grab the raw JSON. Spotted something wrong? Open an issue.