Re: Subjects as Literals

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 12:40 AM, Hugh Glaser <hg@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi Sampo.
> I venture in again...
> I have much enjoyed the interchanges, and they have illuminated a number of
> cultural differences for me, which have helped me understand why some people
> have disagree with things that seem clear to me.
> A particular problem in this realm has been characterised as
> S-P-O v. O-R-O and I suspect that this reflects a Semantic Web/Linked Data
> cultural difference, although the alignment will not be perfect.
> I see I am clearly in the latter camp.
> Some responses below.


imho RDF processing requires both perspectives, and neither is more
semwebby or linky than the other.

On a good day, we can believe what an RDF doc tells us. It does so in
terms of objects/things and their properties and relationships (o-r-o
i guess). On another day, we have larger collections of RDF to curate,
and need to keep track more carefully of who is claiming what about
these object properties; that's the provenance and quads perspective,
s-p-o. Note that the subject/predicate/object terminology comes from
the old M&S spec which introduced reification in a ham-fisted attempt
to handle some of this trust-ish stuff, and that most simple data'
-oriented stuff uses SPARQL, the only W3C formal spec that covers
quads rather than triples. So I don't think the community splits
neatly into two on this, and that's probably for the best!

RDF processing, specs and tooling are about being able to jump in a
fluid and natural way between these two views of data; dipping down
into the 'view from one graph', or zooming out to see the bigger
picture of who says what. Neither is correct, and it is natural for
the terminology to change to capture the shifting emphasis. But until
we make this landscape clearer, people will be confused -- when is it
an attribute or property, and when is it a predicate?

cheers,

Dan

--
"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there
are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't." --Benchley

Received on Tuesday, 6 July 2010 07:19:40 UTC