Re: remembering datatypes - was Re: rdf:PlainLiteral (ISSUE-12)

On 18 April 2011 01:25, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
> Steve Harris wrote:
>>
>> On 2011-04-17, at 19:16, Nathan wrote:
>>
>>> Steve Harris wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2011-04-17, at 17:55, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course, this is OWL not SPARQL.   I don't see any good way to deal
>>>>> with this in SPARQL.    I don't really understand how datatype() and
>>>>> such are supposed to work in SPARQL -- are stores really supposed to
>>>>> remember which values came in as xs:int vs xs:integer?
>>>>
>>>> Yes.
>>>
>>> Out of interest, what practical difference does it make? I'm racking my
>>> brains but struggling to think of one, other than perhaps a graph signing /
>>> encryption case for ground graphs?
>>
>> Well, one matches { ?x ?y "3"^^xsd:int } and one doesn't. Both match { ?y
>> ?y ?z . FILTER(?z = 3) }.
>
> Yes, but what practical value does anybody in the world get from
> "3"^^xsd:integer being different to "3"^^xsd:int?
>
> Who is the person that doesn't want the 3 if some(body/machine) somewhere
> once said it's an xsd:int, but does want the 3 if it was said to be an
> xsd:integer?

Anyone with tooling, workaround and schemas based on XML Schema (or
anything with restrictions to 32 bit integers) might well be sensitive
to such issues and want to handle these types differently.

A quick sampling of the surrounding confusion,

http://www.futureware.biz/mantis/view.php?id=386
 "Is there any reason why all ids in the WSDL are defined as xsd:integer?
The id fields in the database are defined as Number(10). As far as I
understand that, that means 32bit integer.
This would be an xsd:int
The reason I'm asking this is, that .NET creates string properties for
xsd:integer but int proeprties for xsd:int"

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1086586
"[Q:] do you know what the difference is and when do you use each one?
"[A:] http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#integer
integer is the infinite set of integers.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#int
int is derived from integer (via long) with a max value of 2147483647
and a minvalue of -2147483648."

http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/wellink/archive/2011/02/08/xs-int-and-xs-integer-what-s-the-difference.aspx
"[ with screenshots ]
xs:int and xs:integer, what's the difference....
I am busy creating schema's and exposing them as a web service.
I always generate a client and try to post some messages and this time
I was again surprised by BizTalk. (or should I say XML).
When creating a schema you can chose several types for an element.
Some of these are xs:int and xs:integer.
I noticed these two before but didn't bother too much.
But now for the first time I see there is a clear difference in the
way stuff is treated by .Net. Below is a screenshot of a node with the
type xs:integer.
Now after I generated the WCF service for this schema, I imported the
WSDL into VS 2005 and I was quite surprised to see what intellisense
did to these elements in visual studio :
 So intellisense showed me it was actually a string !... And the other
node of type xs:int was the .Net type I expected to see.
So what did I learn today, to stay away from xs:integer and use xs:int instead.
Hope this will help someone in the future, if it does, leave a comment

Hé Patrick,
the behavior is expected as the int in XML is limited to 32-bits
numbers while the integer in XML is unlimited in the numbers it might
contain. So, use int when the numbers you communicate are always
within the boundaries of 32 bits and consider integer otherwise.
Carlo

Hi Patrick. Whoa!. I never realized this. Good to know. This is a good
wake-up info, and keep this in mind.

@Carlo, I knew there was a diference, but i did not expect the
xs:integer to show up in code as a string..... "


...and so on.

So to answer your question, people seem to care to make this
distinction only when the underlying tooling cares, such as when using
code generators.

The int 3 is small enough for the difference to rarely matter; get
larger than (I think) http://dbpedia.org/resource/2147483647 and the
differences emerge...

Oh, and http://www.google.com/webhp?q=2147483647+bug ...hint at a
world of pain where software forgets about such limits; About 426,000
results  for '2147483647 bug'.

cheers,

Dan

Received on Monday, 18 April 2011 08:09:48 UTC