Design Issue (4) - Concepts as language-embedded, language indepe ndent, or both?

I've added this issue to the discussion on the RDF Thesaurus wiki page
<http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfThesaurus>

Here is a summary:-

Issue 4 - Concepts as language-embedded, language independent, or both?

There are multilingual thesauri. When modelling multilingual data in RDF, we
can choose one of the following options: 

Option 1: Concepts in a language - allow language properties only on nodes
typed as Concepts. 

Option 2: Labels in a language - allow language properties (or tags) only on
nodes (or literals) which represent labels. 

Option 3: And/or - allow concepts and/or labels to have language properties.


The choice of solution has bold implications. If we choose option 1 we are
assuming that all abstract concepts are embedded in a language; there can be
no language independent concepts. If we choose option 2 we can model only
concepts that are deemed to be 'language-independent'. If we choose option 3
we can represent both language-embedded and language-independent concepts,
however there may be some considerable scope for confusion. 

... more at <http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfThesaurus>


CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
Fermi Avenue
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom

Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1235 445440

Received on Friday, 31 October 2003 12:36:22 UTC