Re: [SWC] RIF & OWL compatibility

"Gerd Wagner" <wagnerg@tu-cottbus.de> wrote:
> 
> Enrico and Jos,
> 
> yes, the issue of existential information is interesting
> (and also in the field of databases there is no consensus
> about null values being a good idea or not), but is it 
> really an urgent issue for RIF? 
> 
> Some form of null values (or "blank nodes" or skolem 
> constants/terms) may be useful, but probably not needed 
> in phase 1. Do you know of any non-experimental (if not 
> commercial) rule system that supports existential 
> information?
> 
> The differences between a constructive LP-style 
> interpretation of the existential quantifier and 
> the non-consructive classical logic and DL-style 
> interpretation seem to be even less relevant for
> RIF than the issue itself.
> 
> -Gerd

Exactly. From talking to a number of people with real-world RDF experience,
I get the impression that b-nodes are used to refer to individuals when it
is too inconvenient to give them explicit names. This is just Scolemization.

Does anybody have *real-world* RDF experience with cases where truly
existential semantics of b-nodes is used?


	--michael  

Received on Thursday, 12 January 2006 16:07:11 UTC