RE: true/false in RDF?

• From: Joshua Allen <joshuaa@microsoft.com>
• Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:24:48 -0800
• To: "Danny Ayers" <danny.ayers@gmail.com>
• Cc: "Seth Russell" <russell.seth@gmail.com>, <semantic-web@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <0E36FD96D96FCA4AA8E8F2D199320E5204883B68@RED-MSG-43.redmond.corp.microsoft.com>

> http://foobar/page.html rdf:type urn:myterms:CachedObject

Basically, you are saying that Boolean true/false are completely
unnecessary in RDFS.  From a conceptual standpoint this is very elegant.
However, it has some trouble.

If my object has multiple Boolean properties (it does), do I give it
multiple rdf:types?  One rdf:type per property, or one per combinatorial
group of properties?  Without having n factorial number of classes for n
Booleans, you end up with RDFS classes that never completely match the
actual data.  And how do I differentiate between true, false, and
unspecified?  And of course, all of it means I *need* RDFS (and OWL),
*everywhere*.  Why take such a huge dependency if you don't need to?

-J

Received on Wednesday, 16 March 2005 22:24:55 UTC