Re: get rid of the semantics for RDF?

On 12/19/11 12:35 AM, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-12-17 at 12:51 -0500, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> On 12/17/11 12:21 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:
>>> That is why we are stuck. This situation cannot be resolved simply by letting it all hang out. We could simply declare that RDF has no semantics, and is simply to be used by programmers to mess around with in ways they find handy. Really, this might be the best way to move forward. But until we do this, we have to take the semantics seriously.
>> +1
> The promise of the formal semantics of RDF, I think, is that we'll be
> able to merge knowledge.
>
> If I say something, using decontextualized true statements, and you do
> the same, using the same vocabulary, then someone can just merge the
> graphs to have the aggregate knowledge of both of us.   That's pretty
> cool.   (I wish it worked more often, ... but I have some faith the
> situation is improving.)
>
>      -- Sandro
>

Yes, that's very cool, and we and others do stuff like that already. 
Examples include merging across DBpedia, Schema.org, FOAF, SIOC, DC etc..

These merges are also done in a loosely coupled manner. Basically, each 
agent to its own "context lenses".  Meaning: the graphs carrying/bearing 
cross-link oriented relations (across TBoxes) are applied to instance 
data (ABox) conditionally via inference rules.

Merging knowledge requires provenance oriented relations, granularity of 
reification oriented relations, and even signing of collections of 
relations in a named graph.

I think your fundamental goal can be achieved while leaving SPARQL, RDF, 
Inference Rules & Reasoning, and Linked Data loosely coupled. The 
friction right now is more about the fact that the aforementioned 
systems cannot be merged via the RDF spec without opening up other 
problems.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder&  CEO
OpenLink Software
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