RE: Reification - whats best practice?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of ext Frank Manola
> Sent: 27 August, 2004 17:42
> To: Bob MacGregor
> Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Reification - whats best practice?
> 
> 
 (I'm also 
> doubtful about equating a container that contains a single 
> triple with a 
> reified statement, but that's a nit).

They would not equate, because a triple is asserted, yet
a reified statement is not -- therefore, a reification does
cannot equate to a graph (or any other kind of container)
with a single (asserted) triple; insofar as the RDF MT is
concerned (and I think it would be an error to impose any
such interpretation given that the RDF MT is quite clear
that reified statements do not (necessarily) reflect asserted 
triples).


> Named containers of triples might provide a *structural* 
> solution, but 
> they don't necessarily define all the necessary semantics for 
> the common 
> interpretation of such containers. 
>
> ...
> 
> It seems to me that providing a means to expose underlying structure 
> like this is doing things the wrong way around.  We ought to 
> define (at 
> the RDF level) the semantics of what we want, and make the 
> implementations implement it, rather than forcing a 
> provenance model to 
> reflect mechanisms people have chosen for various 
> implementation purposes.

Agreed. Have a look at the MT being worked out for named
graphs, which aims to answer these semantic questions.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2004/HPL-2004-57

Cheers,

Patrick

Received on Friday, 27 August 2004 15:31:17 UTC