Re: RDF Extensibility

On 9 Jul 2010, at 09:29, Bernhard Schandl wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>> I agree with Pat in that case, that it would just be easier not to put restrictions
>> in the abstract rdf syntax at all, instead of complicating things all over the place.
>> There are pragmatic reasons why sentences such as 
>> 
>> <http://bblfish.net/#hjs> "name" "Henry" .
>> 
>> are not going to be successful, the main one being that it is impossible to 
>> adjudicate what the relation "name" refers to is about.
> 
> In that respect, "name" is not different than any URI one has never seen before. What about adding
> 
> "name" rdfs:subPropertyOf foaf:name .
> 
> to this example?

That would be an interesting theory one could have.

But what if someone else, whom you never met, had decided
that

"name" rdfs:subPropertyOf nuclear:NuclearAtomMustExplode .

and he published information with that meaning.

Now how would he know when he came across your document what you meant, and how
would you know when you came across his document what he meant? And how would you
merge documents that came from each other's space?

Or put it differently, if you come across a triple with a pure string
literal relation, how would you know what relation the literal
was referring to? Where is the ontology to be found?

Or if you are a judge in a case that involves some accident attributable
to this issue, how would you be able to attribute blame (or rewards?)

   those types of issue seem to me to indicate that it is not practical to
have pure string literals in predicate position. The only solution will be to
assign some name space to them, such as 

  <http://bblfish.net/#hjs> "name"^^<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> "Henry" .

And as soon as a name space is assigned we can get going again.

   Henry



> Best
> Bernhard

Received on Friday, 9 July 2010 08:14:13 UTC