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

I believe that ³real word object² in the Semantic Web speak doesnıt mean
that it has a physical representation. It is also a concept.

In that sense, a user account is as much of a real world thing as a
person. One can create a class User Account to say that a user account can
be created by someone (system administrator), that it has valid from and
to dates and that it is an account of some person, etc.

As for web documents, there can be a web document presenting information
about a person as much as there can be a web document presenting
information about a user account. And there could be multiple ways to
render information about either a person or a user account.

I have to say that while conceptually I understand the distinction between
³real things² and ³information resources², I still donıt understand the
practical application of the distinction after much reading. To me, the
distinction has to do with some very particular viewpoint that is somewhat
esoteric. After all, we are dealing with the world of data and software.
We canıt process anything, but information.

Since I was struggling with this, I thought that may be making this
distinction is really important for dereferencing (not that other, non
Semantic Web systems donıt display web documents) and I am missing some
technical knowledge to get the ³aha². So, a year ago Iıve asked three
separate senior developers/technical architects who had shallow exposure
to RDF but didnıt come from the Semantic Web community to read on this
subject and tell me if they understood it and could explain it. All three
couldnıt make sense of it. They just thought it was irrelevant. These
folks are all fairly bright and capable with 7 or more years of technical
experience.

This is a limited experiment, for sure, but so far it confirms Holgerıs
view that this is not something people care about or need to understand.

Irene

On 2/20/15, 10:15 AM, "Arthur Ryman" <ryman@ca.ibm.com> wrote:

>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 15:53:35 UTC