Re: Blank nodes in descriptor sets - a proposal to deal with this using Occam's Razor

Thanks Stasinos.

OK, I'm about to start editing the formal doc and will follow the points 
in this exchange - it actually means _less_ change than stripping things 
out and the closer the next version is to the last, the more sustainable 
is the Last Call announcement.

I'll change rdf:Description to owl:Ontology throughout the Rec Track 
docs - if comments suggest that this was a bad idea - as with anything 
else - it can be changed in response to such comments of course.

It will take a group resolution on Monday's call to make the LC 
announcement but given this discussion and those that were held in 
London at the start of this week, I believe the group will be 
comfortable with such a resolution.

Assuming that does happen, the next telco after Monday 21st July will be 
1st September.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

Phil.


Stasinos Konstantopoulos wrote:
> On Wed Jul 16 16:14:29 2008 Phil Archer said:
> 
>> Thanks for putting even more time into this.
>>
>> If I understand you correctly it would be fair to allow this:
>>
>> <ex:material>
>>   <ex:Wood>
>>     <ex:colour>brown</ex:colour>
>>   </ex:Wood>
>> </ex:material>
>>
>> but we should explain that this means that "there should be a resource  
>> out there which is of the type ex:Wood that has the color brown, and  
>> that this is the value filler for our properties." Although this may be  
>> semantically valid, such a construct is usually inappropriate for use in 
>> POWDER.
> 
> Indeed. So dropping this from descriptions would be no big loss, as it
> is hardly expected to be used. But would be a big loss if also dropped
> from attribution elements, disallowing constructs like:
> 
> <attribution>
>   <issuedby>
>     <foaf:Person>
>       <foaf:name>Stasinos</foaf:name>
>       <foaf:phone rdf:resource="tel:210650"/>
>     </foaf:Person>
>   </issuedby>
> </attribution>
> 
> We could, however, mention in the text that it is bad practice to
> re-define entities that already have FOAF or DC descriptions of
> themselves.
> 
>> Giving the node an ID using rdf:about effectively creates a new  
>> vocabulary term that is duplicated every time the POWDER document is  
>> processed and although, again, this may be useful in some circumstances  
>> it's generally better to use a pre-defined term if possible.
> 
> Most definitely better, if possible. The question is about situations
> where there is no appropriate pre-defined vocab item.
> 
>> Finally, since POWDER transports RDF/XML, it is not unreasonable to  
>> expect a POWDER Processor to be do at least minimal processing of RDF  
>> and not just always as XML.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> Note: I will only be "mildly on-line" starting today and during next
> week and "really off-line" the week after that, but I think that we are
> converging, so I am not wooried that I am leaving s'thing important in
> the middle.
> 
> About owl:Ontology, like I wrote yesterday, I would like to leave the
> rdf:Description door open until after summer vacations, but if the group
> feels this should be resolved by LC, then by all means go ahead.
> 
> s
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Phil Archer
Chief Technical Officer,
Family Online Safety Institute
w. http://www.fosi.org/people/philarcher/

Received on Thursday, 17 July 2008 12:06:29 UTC