Re: I have a trouble with The RDF Model

I think this confusion between the graph being the semantic
thing vs being a higher level syntax is an artifact of the
extremely limited expressiveness of RDF today.

Without connectives or quantifiers (and no, reification
does give us a way out of this), there is a certain
isomorphism between the triple syntax and the semantic model
(the graph) which is very confusing.

At some point, when we bite the bullet and introduce
connectives and variables as language constructs into
RDF, I think the difference between the syntax and
semantics will become clearer.

guha

Pierre-Antoine CHAMPIN wrote:

> Guha wrote:
> >  I have a simple (albeit potentially controversial) answer --- it is the
> > range of the interpretation of RDF expressions.
>
> Controversial, indeed ! I'm not sure I dislike it, although :)
>
> But strictly speaking, if it is true,
> then RDF describes Nodes and Arcs, not Resources...
>
> So, as I previously posed it,
> I think the grapoh is the *interpretation* of the XML *syntax*,
> but it is also a "higher level" *syntax*, whose interpretation is in the world of resources (or entities, or both, I'm not sure)...
>
>   Pierre-Antoine
>
> --
> Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the
> universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
> (Bill Watterson -- Calvin & Hobbes)

Received on Friday, 1 December 2000 12:55:45 UTC