Re: URI aliases for RDF terms?

* Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de> [2011-11-09 17:50+0000]
> On 2 Nov 2011, at 16:05, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
> >> Either way I'm not a fan. Yes, the rdf:type URI is a bit ugly, but so is foaf:name. It's too late to change it IMHO.
> > 
> > +1
> > Excruciating precision is a cost of doing business in an unambiguous domain.
> 
> <http://n.w3.org/rdf/type> is no less precise than <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>, but has significantly lower cost.

Agreed, but a growing number of people see this as "a".

(and at least the local name is managable:
  IAO:0000098 rdfs:subClassOf IAO:0000030 .
)


> W3C has maneuvered itself into a dead-end by assigning uselessly verbose URIs to really important things. This is a roadblock for uptake in syntaxes where long URIs are expensive.

I don't see it as a dead-end, but I certainly agree that these long names are an obstacle to adoption.

There's this vision that pops up from time to time that the tools will evolve to a point where everyone will be able to click, drag, blink and mumble and the machine will DTRT. I don't believe our designs should count on this infrastructure. There will always be someone who has to pay pedantic attention to identifiers.


> IMO W3C should:
> 
> 1. Assign short URIs in a *single* namespace for all RDF and RDFS (and possibly OWL and XSD) concepts *now*
> 2. Leave it up to individual WGs to adopt those short URIs at their own leisure
> 3. Leave it up to implementers to add support for them already
> 4. The RDF WG should *not* do anything about them in RDF 1.1, but perhaps in RDF 2.0

Every evolution path I see from this leads to either fragmentation or unrealistic implementation demands. The options I see are:
  a. do nothing.
  b. gradual introduction of redundant short terms, followed by gradual redaction of longer names. -- good bye cardinality
  c. international change-over day. -- all the air traffic control and clinical support systems relying on RDF will crash that day.
  d. stake out short syntactic forms for use in turtle in SPARQL but leave the denotations the same.

> Best,
> Richard

-- 
-ericP

Received on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 20:26:56 UTC