- From: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:02:24 +0000
- To: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Cc: RDF Working Group WG <public-rdf-wg@w3.org>
On 17 Dec 2011, at 16:02, Pat Hayes wrote:
>> <a> { <b> <c> <d> }
>>
>> does NOT entail
>>
>> { <b> <c> <d> }
…
> Because this has the (to me surprising) consequence that publishing a dataset does not assert ANY of the named graphs in it.
This is a Good Thing. Many of the published datasets are caches of material gathered from elsewhere (e.g., Billion Triples Challenge dataset, LOD Cache), bundled together for the convenience of data consumers. Assertion of this information is not intended by the publisher. The information is published in the form of collections of named graphs in order to preserve context information (source URIs).
> Which leaves me wondering what the point of having datasets can possibly be in the first place.
See http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/TF-Graphs-UC for some reasons why members of this WG want them.
> Does the Semantic Web consist mostly of unasserted fiction?
You mean as opposed to your emails, which consist mostly of asserted fiction? ;-)
Information doesn't have to be somehow formally asserted in order to be factual.
The Semantic Web doesn't specify a mechanism for asserting information. As with anything published on the Web, whether it is considered asserted relies on conventions, social contracts, and case law.
Best,
Richard
Received on Monday, 19 December 2011 20:02:57 UTC