Re: Practical issues arising from the "null relative URIs"-hack

On 4/3/14 7:06 AM, Martynas Jusevičius wrote:
> your statement is more politically-correct, but that's not the point.
>
> After all these efforts by the community to argue that "RDF is a data
> model and not syntax" and point this out as a newbie-misconception
> (should I bring up RDF/XML here?), suddenly it is fine to have a
> specification that does the opposite: base itself on RDF syntax, not
> data model? Most of presentations about RDF that I've seen emphasize
> absolute URIs, but now it looks like we were doing it all wrong and we
> can come up with Relative-RDF at a snap of a finger.
Martynas,

Richard's fundamental point is correct. The trouble is that there are so 
many misconceptions, horrible terms, bad examples (e.g., use of 
<http://example.com/*> everywhere), bizarre and draconian narratives, 
that have swirled around RDF causing these issues. Recent RDF 1.1 
related work has come a long way in regards to addressing many of this 
issues etc..

"Relative Graph" is a new phrase for sure, but the concept it denotes is 
old and intrinsic to AWWW, but sadly lost in a mangled narrative.

When you say RDF Model, it is only accurate in a sense, now this doesn't 
make your perspective wrong, it's just a case of incomplete perspective. 
Again, most normal folks will have partial perspectives on RDF, for the 
reasons I've outlined above.

RDF is actually a Language (a system of signs, syntax, and semantics) 
for encoding and decoding observations (data).

I am sure we can tweak LDP such that it accommodates the notion of 
"Relative RDF Graphs" in conjunction with RDF abstract syntax. That's 
all that needs to be fixed, and we would have effectively buried, rather 
than perpetuated yet another "RDF Paradox".

I understand the pains of anyone that's frustrated with these matters, 
but now that we are putting the real problem in full view, so let's 
solve it via incorporation of clarity into the spec.

The "snap of a finger" was really a "clarity snapshot" that emerged from 
a good brainstorming session via a lengthy discussion thread. Basically, 
an example of why long threads aren't necessarily bad :-)


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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