Re: "shape" as a relationship, not a class

Holger Knublauch <holger@topquadrant.com> wrote on 02/08/2015 05:36:32 PM:

> ... I am afraid the distinction 
> between real-world objects and their representation drifts into 
> theoretical realms that nobody outside of the RDF world seems to care 
> about (and rightfully so). 

Holger,

The distinction is important in some cases because if you fail to make the 
distinction, then when you read the RDF, it sounds like nonsense. The 
classic example is the distinction between a person and a user account 
owned by that person. A person is a RWO and should have a URI that is 
different that the user account, which is an information resource (a web 
document).

A web document can have properties such as creator (a person), creation 
date, modification date, etc. It makes sense to say that a user account 
document has a modification date, but it is nonsense to say that the 
person who owns the user account has that modification date (barring 
coincidental plastic surgery on that date). FOAF makes this clear. This 
whole topic is nicely discussed in [1], which is co-authored by your 
newest colleague.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/

Received on Friday, 20 February 2015 15:16:03 UTC