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

Thanks Harold. Unfortunately, it doesn＊t. I must be very dense :)

I＊ve read this before - many times. One reason this doesn＊t do anything
for me is that I see the distinctions described here as trivial,
uninteresting and not realistic.

In the information world (and this is what we are dealing with here - bits
and bytes), we never deal with the real, living and breathing Alice. We
can＊t. We are dealing with some digital identifier of Alice＊s information
record. Information about Alice can be contained in multiple places - her
employer has some data about her, IRS (if she leaves in the US) has some
data about her, DMV has some data about her and so on. All these systems
have some data validation constraints. One may require that there must be
a phone number, another one doesn＊t. These are not web documents - yet
they have strong data quality requirements.

Also, there is not a single home page that renders some information about
Alice. She could have her own web site or a blog. She could also have a
Facebook page and a LinkedIn page. Her employer may have a web page for
her on their web site. Some pages may be static, some may be generated
from the information in some database that has a set of records (or even
RDF triples) about Alice. The pages could have some constraints, but they
are not in any way more likely to have constraints than the underlying
data.

The question for me remains, so what? What is the ※therefore§?

Irene

On 2/20/15, 11:17 AM, "Solbrig, Harold R." <Solbrig.Harold@mayo.edu> wrote:

>Would:
>
>http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/#semweb
>
>Help? 
>
>Section 3.1 describes the situation: "Bob may not like the look of the
>homepage, but fancy
>the person Alice. So two URIs are needed, one for Alice, one for the
>homepage or 
>a RDF document describing Alice."
>
>Paraphrasing, "I may thank that the shape of Alice's (RDF) home page does
>not conform to my requirements.  This is NOT about Alice, it is about the
>description"
>
>
>On 2/20/15, 9:53 AM, "Irene Polikoff" <irene@topquadrant.com> wrote:
>
>>I believe that 昆real word object昌 in the Semantic Web speak doesn易t 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
>>昆real things昌 and 昆information resources昌, I still don易t 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 can易t 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 don易t display web documents) and I am missing some
>>technical knowledge to get the 昆aha昌. So, a year ago I易ve asked three
>>separate senior developers/technical architects who had shallow exposure
>>to RDF but didn易t come from the Semantic Web community to read on this
>>subject and tell me if they understood it and could explain it. All three
>>couldn易t 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 Holger易s
>>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 16:49:33 UTC