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RE: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic

• To: "John Cowan" <jcowan@r...>
• Subject: RE: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
• From: "Shelley Powers" <shelleyp@b...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 09:25:58 -0600
• Cc: "Tim Bray" <tbray@t...>,<lists@a...>,"Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>,"Mike Champion" <mc@x...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <200211181409.JAA14782@m...>

> Actually, neither stripes nor containers are model constructs: both are
> reducible to triples and bnodes.
>
> A stripe like:
>
> <rdf:Description rdf:about="20021115clin002.xml">
>   <subject>
>     <Descriptor>
>       <vocab>SNOMED-RT-0203</vocab>
>       <code>P0-00000</code>
>       <editMode>implicit</editMode>
>       <label>Procedure, NOS</label>
>     </Descriptor>
>   </subject>
> </rdf:Description>
>
> is equivalent to:
>
> <RDF:Description rdf:about="20021115clin002.xml">
>   <subject resource="#quux"/>
> </rdf:Description>
> <Descriptor id="quux">
>   <vocab>SNOMED-RT-0203</vocab>
>   <code>P0-00000</code>
>   <editMode>implicit</editMode>
>   <label>Procedure, NOS</label>
> </Descriptor>
>
> which is in RPV syntax (if I have not goofed):
>
> <R r="20021115clin002.xml">
>   <PV p="/namespaces/meta1#subject" v="#quux">
> </R>
> <R id="quux">
>   <PV p="/namespaces/meta1#vocab">SNOMED-RT-0203</PV>
>   <PV p="/namespaces/meta1#code">P0-00000</PV>
>   <PV p="/namespaces/meta1#editMode">implicit</PV>
>   <PV p="/namespaces/meta1#label">Procedure, NOS</PV>
> </R>
>
> As for containers, a container is just a bnode with a type property and
> a bunch of properties named rdf:_1, rdf:_2, etc.  The rdf:li is just
> syntactic sugar.

Yours is the second interpretation of the model showing v as a resource
defined elsewhere. I wonder, though, if a naive person with no exposure to
RDF/XML would understand to do this? For instance, another interpretation
could be to nest the second resource directly within the first. Would this
nesting be illegal? It's perfectly proper XML, but is it proper RPV?

According to the Semantics document, there is more to a container than bnode
and triples. There is an assumed relationship between the elements, and a
positional constraint. There is nothing in Tim's document about using _1,
_2, in order to a) demonstrate that these properties are part of a
container, and b) these objects have a positional constraint. Someone
walking in off the street without any previous knowledge of the RDF wouldn't
know do to this, or how to read this correctly just given your
interpretation.

And how would we represent a bnode? Would we show a specialized machine
generated code, and if so, how would the person know that it wasn't 'real'?
And would the property then be "propertySeq" or "Seq"? This would have to
formalized, or we'll all be doing something different.

For something like reification -- how would a naive user know to interpret
the reified statement as a set of assertions about a statement rather than
direct statements? We know, but then, we know the RDF model. This whole
thing is based on a naive user being able to read the XML without having to
know the model.

Shelley

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
    • From: Bill de hÓra <bill.dehora@p...>
  • Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

• References:
  • Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>

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