Re: SeRQL an RDF rule language: scoping Rules vs Query in W3C work

* Bill de hÓra <dehora@eircom.net> [2003-11-05 18:12+0000]
> 
> Patrick Stickler wrote:
> >
> >I agree with Jeen's points below.
> >
> >To add my own 2 cents, I'd also like to see query and rules solutions
> >for RDF expressed *in* RDF. 
> 
> I'm not sure how that would be done in RDF as it stands, given its
> expressive power, but it seems like a nice thing to have.

What you might end up with here is an RDF *description* of a query-related 
data structure. Maybe handy for testcase-style interop, but pretty ugly
to read and think about. I believe DAML Query works this way. My
understanding of XQuery btw is that they started out with an XML syntax
but now mostly focus on the non-XML syntax, since it is vastly more
usable. My hunch is that RDF Query might go the same way...

Closest you can get and still be pretty is a kind of query-by-example, 
with bNodes for variables, perhaps decorated with variable names in a 
well-known namespace. Such RDF/XML would never be taken assertionally 
but used to ask questions. I think Edutella have something in this vein. Sorry 
I'm in a rush or I'd do the googling for links. Also this approach
doesn't allow blanks for property names, since RDF/XML doesn't allow
that.

Dan