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Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic

• To: shelleyp@b... (Shelley Powers)
• Subject: Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 10:53:02 -0500 (EST)
• Cc: jcowan@r... (John Cowan), tbray@t... (Tim Bray), lists@a..., jonathan@o... (Jonathan Borden), mc@x... (Mike Champion), xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <AOEKLHGMHIHGNIBEDMNMCEADDFAA.shelleyp@b...> from "Shelley Powers" at Nov 18, 2002 09:25:58 AM

Shelley Powers scripsit:

> 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?

No, it isn't.  RPV does not nest (except for the PV element(s) being inside
the R element, obviously).

> 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. 

AFAIK that is just encoded in the container type.

> _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.

Granted.  But Tim is serializing triples directly, not working downward
from RDF/XML.

> 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'?

In RPV, an R element represents a bnode iff it does not have an r attribute.
In order for there to be any links to the bnode, of course it has to have
an id attribute, unlike the situation in RDF/XML where an odd-striped
element can have neither about nor id attributes.

> And would the property then be "propertySeq" or "Seq"? This would have to
> formalized, or we'll all be doing something different.

It would be "{rdfnamespace}Seq".

> 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.

Not really.  RPV is meant to be easier to read in terms of its triples,
*not* to replace the RDF model with some simpler model.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan@r...  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
"The exception proves the rule."  Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves
my theory."  Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts
the rule to the proof."  But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an
exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from."

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