Re: Encouraging canonical serializations of datatypes in RDF

On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 17:56 +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> On 2012-08-01, at 17:09, David Booth wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 10:10 -0400, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> >> OK, both use cases are acknowledged.
> >> 
> >> Given that there is a use case where the time zone is important, how can 
> >> suggesting only using Z when timezone is not important be any help to 
> >> application writers?
> > 
> > Because using a fixed Z timezone simplifies applications for which
> > xsd:datetime is only used to unambiguously encode a point in time -- not
> > also a location.  Again, different applications have different needs. 
> > 
> > Just because this will not help *all* applications does not mean that it
> > won't help *some* applications.  
> 
> It *might* help some applications (ones that don't have a
> xsd:dateTime / ISO 8601 library, which should hopefully be rare), but
> it will prevent others from working at all. That doesn't seem like a
> good idea to me.

Whoa!  Not true at all.  Again, I am *not* saying that a fixed Z
timezone should be used for *all* data.  Clearly in your use case where
timezone provenance is needed, a fixed Z timezone should *not* be used.
Nothing changes that.  The apps will still work fine.

> 
> > The more we can make RDF manipulable by simple tools as often as
> > possible the better, even if it cannot be done 100% of the time.
> 
> I agree, but I don't think this change would do that. It would move
> RDF further from XML, and make it very hard to use is some common
> situations.

Can you explain?  Exactly how would encouraging the use of a canonical
form of an XML data type when appropriate move RDF further from XML?   

And exactly how would a canonical form be harder to consume in *any*
situation?


-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2012 17:49:35 UTC