RE: Containers

Brian McBride wrote:

>
> I'm not sure what it would mean for a seq or an alt to have
> an explicit rdfx:member property e.g.:
>
>   <rdf:Seq>
>     <rdfx:member>foo</rdfx:member>
>   </rdf:Seq>
>
> Where in the sequence does this foo come?

May I suggest that XPointer with its ChildSeq construction
http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr#child-seqs has a good general solution to the
container problem, e.g.:

<rdf:Seq rdf:ID="foo">
	<rdfx:member>bar</rdfx:member>
	<rdfx:member>baz</rdfx:member>
</rdf:Seq>

can be addressed as:

	#foo/1
	#foo/2

or even as

	#xpointer(id('foo')/rdfx:member[1])

i think that with XPointer, RDF can totally offload the need to generate
_1,_2 predicates (except for attribute properties which are unordered ...
but someone who wants to define members of an rdf:Seq with attributes has
already asked for trouble).

Jonathan Borden
The Open Healthcare Group
http://www.openhealth.org