- From: Seth Russell <seth@robustai.net>
- Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 16:22:36 -0800
- To: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>
- Cc: "RDFIG" <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
From: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com> > [...] > > In RDF, suppose you could know that two nodes in two > > graphs represented one and the same resource. Would it > > not be allowable, even desirable, to merge them? If not, > > why not? > > This is actually a rather intreguing question. If you decided that you > *wanted* to merge the nodes, then you could of course do so, but you > would have to come up with a strategy for getting rid of the URI-views > that you do not want. For example, say you had:- > > <#p> = <#q> . > > and then references to p and q throughout your store. Which URI-ref > would you use? Some processors should have enough power to let you > filter out the ones that you don't want, perhaps based upon string > length, and then alphabetical order. Indeed, there is a filter for CWM > that can do just that [1]. If a system uses an internal identifier for nodes, then when some semantic process determines that two nodes represent the same resource, merging them is not a problem. And keeping things straight such that the system can communicate with extermal systems that uses a particular URI to identify that same node is not a problem eitther. In expressing this to you I'll use blank nodes implying that I have an internal identity for the node, but that you will never know it. http://robustai.net/mentography/uriMultiple.gif I did an animated gif of a semantic process interperting two nodes as one. You might find this somewhat related. http://robustai.net/mentography/quantification.html Seth Russell
Received on Monday, 3 December 2001 19:24:19 UTC