Re: What is an RDF Query?

From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
Subject: Re: What is an RDF Query? 
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 09:09:17 -0400

> I don't see anything terribly wrong with having multiple formats and
> protocols (such as for assertion and query), but would you agree we
> could do it all with assertions?
> 
> Instead of being able to make assertions
>       "Ralph is in his office."
> 
> and make queries
>       "Is Ralph is in his office?"
> 
> and maybe make weak assertions (or I dunno what-all)
>       (I suspect that) "Ralph is in his office."
> 
> we could just use assertions for everything:
>        "Ralph is in his office."
>        "I want to know whether Ralph is in his office."
>        "I suspect that Ralph is in his office."
> 
> Of course this requires a vocabulary (ontology) for expressing wanting
> to know things (queries) and suspecting things (weak assertions) or
> whatever.   

Yes, indeed.  Not only would you need the vocabularly, but you need a
theory for this sort of thing, which may be difficult to devise.

>     -- sandro

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research