Re: bnodes as answer bindings

> Can you give references for all this terminology that you cite?  
> What exactly is the "active" domain? There is nothing in any  
> semantic theory that I know of that distinguishes *things in the  
> domain* on the basis of the kind of name that is used to refer to  
> them with. The idea does not make sense, in any case: if bnodes  
> were obliged to refer to a non-active domain while names refer to  
> something else, then the troublesome redundancies would be eliminated.

The first entry in <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22active 
+domain%22+database> is a survey in DBs written 20 years ago.

> I have never previously heard of this terminology of  
> "distinguished" vs. "nondistinguished". (You have everyone's  
> permission at this point to roll your eyes in amusement at my  
> profound ignorance, of course.) I would be interested to see where  
> this terminology was first used, and what its history is. In a  
> database context where there are no bnodes, the distinction would  
> be vacuous.

Ah. Second and third entries in <http://scholar.google.com/scholar? 
q=distinguished%20variables> are DB references from almost 30 years ago.

--e.