Re: model theory for RDF/S

All,

Dan Connolly wrote:

> "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
> 
>>I am concerned that this model theory locks RDF into a particular
>>way of interpreting literals, namely that the interpretation of a literal
>>can be completely determined from its label, using a fixed mapping to
>>literal values.
>>
> 
> I believe this is by design. It's an important requirement on
> RDF syntax that it be "context free"... i.e. that this
> level of meaning is syntactically evident.


This is indeed an explicit a design decision, and related to the notions 
of weak typing vs. strong typing in programming languages. RDF is 
"weakly typed" in the sense that a schema is not needed for some 
rudimentary processing (this was a requirement during the RDF M+S WG 
work, but somehow I think it didn't get documented as one...).

Think of Common Lisp vs. C++ ;-)

Consequently, I think this means that I really like Patrick's 
"dt:date:2001-10-01T09:23:00Z" etc. proposal 
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/2001Sep/0043.html).

Regards,

	- Ora

--
Ora Lassila  mailto:daml@lassila.org  http://www.lassila.org/
Research Fellow, Nokia Research Center