RE: Blank nodes for concepts.

Have I missed something here?  Is there any reason why the concept *must* be
blank?  This isn't the same as overriding the authority of the thesaurus - I
(as encoder of thesaurus in RDF) can add *a* name for a concept if I want to
help users of the RDF form - I just don't use the authorities naming space
for those URIs.

Why not give it a URI (urn:uuid being a possible choice) anyway even though
the primary identification in the theasurus is by other means.  Then, once
found, the usual way of referring to a resources is the same as other RDF.

Alistair's arguments are:

> 1.  It makes for better-looking RDF encodings (this is a serious point,
> as it may help reduce the uptake hurdle - how many times have you heard
> people groan that RDF looks like gobbledegook because of all the URIs?
> Also remember many potential users are from totally non sem-web
environments,
> e.g. english heritage.  RDF is a new and complicated beast to them.)

Good point - and unfortunately not just for this situation  The additional
URIs can be assigned separately (another part of the file) from the
descriptions, because there is a uniquely identifying property set.   [I
always fancied a property "rdf:uri" and only having bNodes in RDF.]

Or write in N3 :-)

> 2.  It may not be appropriate to give a URI to a concept that is part of
> some thesaurus that has been defined by an authority outside the semantic
> web world.  So until the authority itself gives its own concepts URIs, we
> can still make statements about them using reference-by-description.
> 
> On the down side ...
> 
> 1.  Someone has to write a bit of reasoning code to equate all blank
> nodes with the same prefLabel/rdfs:isDefinedBy property values, and run it
> over the data before publishing it.
>
> Where I fall on the matter:  in the short term use URIs to identify
> concepts, so can work in a world without any reasoning required.  In the
> slightly longer term look into allowing the blank-node style encodings,
> and support the little bit of reasoning required with some code.

I guess I don't see it as black-and-white.  There can be several names
(URIs) for a thing.  If, later, that authority does assign URIs, we add
owl:sameAs rules.

	Andy

Received on Sunday, 8 February 2004 16:20:07 UTC