Re: "shape" as a relationship, not a class

On 2/22/15 3:00 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:

>> With linked data, it is indeed an issue. We have situations today
>> where we cannot tell the difference between the identifier for the
>> metadata and the identifier for the thing the metadata describes. This
>> didn't matter when we were do very little with our metadata other than
>> creating displays for humans, but as soon as we contemplated linking
>> between various data stores, this came back to bite us. It's something
>> we are definitely struggling with, actively, at the moment. In
>> practice, the difference matters.
>
> Karen, could you clarify what is the "therefore" of this dicussion for
> you? It sounds like you are saying that the notion of Shapes helps
> people differentiate metadata records from the things that the metadata
> describes. Assuming you want to employ some formalism for that, why not
> just use some other metaclass such as :MetadataClass, instead of plain
> rdfs:Class? Or a flag ":metadata true" on those classes, or use a naming
> convention to have :Book and :BookMetadata, or a property :about that
> links metadata with its RWO, or whatever. At least everything remains a
> class.

Actually, Holger, this is unrelated to classes, and I don't believe that 
anything related to classes will resolve it. It is entirely related to 
identification.

>
> What is metadata for you may be data for someone else. Building a
> parallel universe takes away that flexibility.

All metadata is data. A lot of data is metadata. It's a question of context.

- kc

>
> Holger
>
>
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600

Received on Monday, 23 February 2015 14:33:00 UTC