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Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic

• To: "Shelley Powers" <shelleyp@b...>
• Subject: Re: RDF for unstructured databases, RDF for axiomatic
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 21:26:49 -0500
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <AOEKLHGMHIHGNIBEDMNMKEDKDFAA.shelleyp@b...>

Shelley,

> > >...Personally, I believe that neither
> > > construct is discussed further in the semantics document
> > because each is,
> > in
> > > a way, a re-interpretation of already defined aspects of the RDF
model.
> >
> > ??? Huh ??? The RDF Semantics document *is* the definition of the RDF
> > "model". It was written specifically to fix ambiguities which
> > have resulted
> > from interpretations such as yours of the RDF M&S (i.e. old version).
> >
>
> Excuse me? In what way Godlike person with all the answers? Since you
> decided to get personal because people have pushed at your rather uncalled
> for dismissal of containers and reification based on your viewpoint.

I *don't* mean this personally. Rereading my quote: "It was written
specifically to fix ambiguities which have resulted from interpretations
such as yours of the RDF M&S" ... I can see how you might interpret that to
be a criticism -- it's not: What I was trying to say was that RDF M&S (1999)
was written in such a way that there were conflicting i.e. ambiguous
interpretations of things such as reification and containers.
I didn't mean to single *your interpretation* as causing the ambiguity,
rather to say that your interpretation was one several conflicting
interpretations, and *that* was the problem.

Your interpretations were entirely reasonable given RDF M&S (1999). But so
were other interpretations, and this created a sort of chaos. The new RDF
Semantics is written to clarify such interpretations and what I am saying is
that your interpretations are not valid regarding the new RDF Semantics.
Specifically, the decision not to give reification and containers a
semantics is not because RDF M&S (1999) says all that needs to be said about
these topics, hardly. The language in RDF Semantics is because there is no
agreed upon semantics for reification and containers (specifically rdf:Alt).

Now from my viewpoint, I never liked containers because I disliked the
<rdf:li> -> <rdf:_3> syntax, and reification because it caused triple
bloat -- as well as being the topic of endless arguments that I couldn't
understand. It turned out that there were other reasons that the logicians
didn't like either of these, so I was happy to assume that the reason that I
didn't understand RDF reification was that it was not properly specified
:-)) (I'm still unsure what reification really is).

In any case I never intended to get personal.

Jonathan

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