Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Hi Frank,

> I'd seriously suggest you look for some alternative  to "data item" 
> for the concept in question.

OK, but this leads to a question which I accutally wanted to try to 
avoid asking on this list.

Hmm, I will do it anyway and see what happens ;-)

Question 4: What term should we use instead?

Cheers,

Chris


--
Chris Bizer
Freie Universität Berlin
Phone: +49 30 838 54057
Mail: chris@bizer.de
Web: www.bizer.de

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@acm.org>
To: "Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de>
Cc: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; <www-tag@w3.org>; 
<semantic-web@w3.org>; "Linking Open Data" 
<linking-open-data@simile.mit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 6:07 PM
Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and 
Linked Data


> Chris--
>
> I appreciate that we run into terminology conflicts all the time 
> around here, but I'd seriously suggest you look for some alternative 
> to "data item" for the concept in question.  An awful lot of people 
> (particularly those involved with databases) are used to seeing 
> "data  item" refer to something like a property or attribute (like 
> "name" or  "age").  More specifically, they're used to seeing 
> records as  containing multiple data items (or their values).  From 
> that point of  view, the sentence "When you interpret the Web of 
> Data as a set of  interlinked databases, a data item would equal a 
> record in a specific  database." looks particularly strange.  As I 
> say, I understand the  inevitability of terminology conflicts, but 
> ...?
>
> Cheers!
>
> --Frank
>
> On Jul 25, 2007, at 10:12 AM, Chris Bizer wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>>> I can't think of a term for "the information which you get about 
>>> the thing identified by it  when you look up a URI" which works 
>>> for me.
>>
>>> It has of course the term "Representation" which connects an 
>>> Information Resource and the (metadata, bits) pair which you get 
>>> back, which is different.
>>
>> As we did not want to repeat the definition all over the tutorial, 
>> we ended up with a term called "data item".
>>
>> Within section 2.1 of the tutorial, we define the term as: "The 
>> term data items refers to the description of a non-information 
>> resource that a client obtains by dereferencing a specific URI that 
>> identifies this non-information resource." (http://sites.wiwiss.fu- 
>> berlin.de/suhl/bizer/pub/LinkedDataTutorial/#aliases)
>>
>> Note that the definition is a bit more specific than your sentence 
>> above, as it is restricted to non-information resources and not 
>> things in general (assuming that your term "thing" refers to non- 
>> information resources as well as information resources).
>>
>> We were also struggling to find a good word that matches the 
>> concept and have chosen "data item" in the end as it somehow 
>> relates to the overall term "Linked Data" and as we hope that 
>> people from the database community will understand the second 
>> informal definition of the term: "When you interpret the Web of 
>> Data as a set of interlinked databases, a data item would equal a 
>> record in a specific database."
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Chris
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 25 July 2007 16:48:15 UTC