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Is a namespace a set?

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Is a namespace a set?
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@m...>
• Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 12:46:08 -0500

I want to clear up what may be a misunderstanding that I may have promoted.

I have described a namespace as being used to define the laws of physics for
the particular 'space'. It has been pointed out, Nicholas?, that this is in
contradistinction to a namespace being simply a set.

1. A RDDL document defines a proper set of resources each with a name and so
a RDDL document can be thought of as defining a traditional namespace.

RDDL ::= (id, nature, purpose, href, title, xml:lang, xml:base, content)*

the XML ID when associated with a rddl:resource labels the resource with a
unique XML name. The other properties of the tuple can be thought of as
merely little bits of metadata about the name. On the other hand, this
_attributes_ of the resource can be used to locate other or referenced
resources which are themselves thus related (but not equated :-) to the
namespace.

So yes, a namespace is a set, but can be, through indirection, thought of as
more. In my example, which I need to clarify, I discuss Euclidian
geometry/Newtonian Mechanics and very briefly String Theory. My idea of
using this as an example is that while our space _looks_ 3 dimensional to
us, as we look deep into an atom, many higher dimensions seem to appear
(e.g. String Theory), so that the _analogy_ is simply that while a namespace
looks like a simple set, one might look inside and derive a more complex
structure. This is simply an analogy that I am making (it is not in the RDDL
spec)

Jonathan

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    • From: james anderson <james.anderson@s...>

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