Formal Semantics of RDF

RDF Team--

My suggestion is that you base the formal semantics of RDF on
the work of Chris Strachey, Dana Scott, etc.  --  i.e. on "denotational semantics" and set theory--
rather than on model-theory/graph-theory.  The primary reason is that graph theory
will not (easily) support Boolean query languages on the structures.  To support the semantics
of Boolean query languages, you need to use set-theory directly.

Chris Strachey developed something based on triples years ago, but I have not been able to
find the reference to it.  I would need to ask some of my colleagues to hunt it down.

Here is one reference.  If you are interested in pursuing this further, please let me know, and
I will provide additional references.

http://vmoc.museophile.com/pioneers/strachey.html


Thanks,
Terry Hardgrave

terry.hardgrave@ed.gov
terry.hardgrave@pearson.com