Re: [External] : Re: RDF is a framework, not a vocabulary

Am 12. Juli 2024 15:48:19 MESZ schrieb Souripriya Das <souripriya.das@oracle.com>:
>Hi Thomas,
>
>> The technical argument is: it would be non-monotonic if you could annotate a triple with the remark that it is not asserted.
>
>I'd say that that "not asserted" in the "remark" is only interpreted in the context of the domain or application that the data creator is modeling ... it has nothing to do with RDF's notion of assertion of a triple.

I'd say that is not what is called for. The request for "unasserted assertions" was never properly specified nor has a use case been submitted, but discussions and anecdotal evidence suggest that often RDF standard reification is used to describe triples without asserting them. The whole point of that tedious approach is that a reification quad can never be returned by a query that only searches for the triple itself. That is a kind of safety device that no mere annotation can provide. 

IMO either we support the use case, or we dismiss it as out of scope, in which case people will have to rely on specific vocabularies and querying conventions, or on out-of-band means like named graphs. If we decide to support the use case, then we'll have to do it right. 

However, recent discussions lead me to believe that the solution is not to be found with stronger support for "unassertedness", but rather the opposite: stronger support for annotations on triples. 
Because, taking the proposed semantics of reification serious, currently we only annotate unasserted assertions, and the eventual presence of the actual triple in the same graph is mere coincidence. In theory there is no connection between the two, and practice is governed by diverging intuitions. That quite probably is the issue that we actually have to address. 

Best, 
Thomas 

>Thanks,
>Souri.
>
>
>________________________________
>From: Thomas Lörtsch <tl@rat.io>
>Sent: Friday, July 12, 2024 4:27 AM
>To: Souripriya Das <souripriya.das@oracle.com>
>Cc: RDF-star WG <public-rdf-star-wg@w3.org>
>Subject: [External] : Re: RDF is a framework, not a vocabulary
>
>
>
>> On 12. Jul 2024, at 10:18, Souripriya Das <souripriya.das@oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am just wondering if the recent wave of discussions is taking us beyond the "framework" focus of RDF over to the territory of new vocabularies that can potentially be created on top of the enhanced framework of RDF.
>>
>> Since the goal of our WG is to determine the essential extensions to the framework in current RDF that will be critical for enabling and simplifying the target capabilities -- statements about statements and support for duplicate triples, concerns about issues that are more pertinent to development of interesting vocabularies on top of RDF1.2 (similar to SKOS on top of RDF1.1) should be avoided, IMHO.
>>
>> As long as RDF1.2 allows association of a term with a triple (or a block of triples, in case of many-to-many), data creators can designate such a term to belong to custom classes – :Relation, :Reification, :Myth, :Nonsense, etc. –
>
>Those are very different terms. I agree that :Myth, :Nonsense, :Reported, :Endorsed, :etc are concepts that should be treated in ontologies on top of RDF. But if a statement is part of the graph, i.e. a triple, or if it’s only described but not asserted, i.e a reification, is an essential aspect that can’t be handled outside the core.
>That seems very intuitive to me. The technical argument is: it would be non-monotonic if you could annotate a triple with the remark that it is not asserted.
>
>Best,
>Thomas
>
>
>>  that make sense in their domain. If there is a common set of such classes that are found to be important in many domains, enthusiasts can create vocabularies to capture those. Whether such classification determines if a "named" (put your favorite term here) triple (or block of triples) should be considered as "asserted" or not -- should be up to the vocabulary designers, not our WG.
>>
>> Let us focus on the "framework" improvement part only and leave the vocabulary aspects to data creators and enthusiasts.
>>
>> Hoping for timely and successful completion of RDF1.2 spec,
>> Souri.
>
>

Received on Saturday, 13 July 2024 10:17:23 UTC