Re: Subjects as Literals

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been studiously avoiding this rat king of a thread, but just on
> this suggestion:
>
> On 2 July 2010 11:16, Reto Bachmann-Gmuer <reto.bachmann@trialox.org>
> wrote:
> ...
> > Serialization formats could support
> >
> > "Jo" :nameOf :Jo
> >
> > as a shortcut for
> >
> > [ owl:sameAs "Jo"; :nameOf :Jo]
> >
> > and a store could (internally) store the latter as
> >
> > "Jo" :nameOf :Jo
> >
> > for compactness and efficiency.
>
> what about keeping the internal storage idea, but instead of owl:sameAs,
> using:
>
> :Jo rdfs:value "Jo"
>
> together with
>
> :Jo rdf:type rdfs:Literal
>
> rdf:value has no clear semantics and it might be used and interpreted
differently. owl:sameAs has a clear semantics and if the processor supports
owl the above is legal and an unambiguous expression of the intended
meaning.

While there might be arguments and advantages on a theoretical level for
empowering the rdf layer itself to allow expressing the synonymity of terms
and literal subjects I don't see any practical benefits. We're moving
towards higher levels of abstraction, to describe the world with triples in
the semantic web owl is an essential foundation. With this semantic web we
can have what we need and want (literal subjects). To me the discussion on
the ideal separation of the layers might be theoretically interesting, but
for practical purposes I don't care where IP ends and TCP begins, how my
files maps to sector and similarly if the semantic stack is designed as
elegant as it could if I have to use owl to have my literal subjects. What I
do care about is the stability of what I'm building upon.

Bring RDF and OWL (Full) closer by combined introductions and tutorial, I
can see lots of benefits in that, but mainly costs in changing RDF.


Cheers,
reto