Re: Layers

Hi all,

On Apr 30, 2012, at 6:00 PM, Thomas Baker <tom@tombaker.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 10:01:23PM +0200, Dan Brickley wrote:
>>> A surface is something like a bundle of overlaid layers, like a movie still
>>> made up from overlaid cels. Or, put the other way, a layer is part of a
>>> suface which has been peeled off and raised above the surface. (Danbri's
>>> pictures work either way.) Think of the surface as the opaque background of
>>> the transparent layers: bnodes are marks on this surface. We could copy a
>>> layer onto another surface, for example, and then the suface idea of
>>> conjunction (replacing unions and merges) works here also: to conjoin A and
>>> B, just copy them both onto a new surface.
>> 
>> That's quite interesting. It's refreshing to be able to start to articulate
>> operations that work with larger units than triples. I wonder what other
>> kinds of operations between graphs/layers/surfaces are useful in everyday rdf
>> (/owl) life?
> 
> The Layers metaphor fits very nicely with the notion of Levels in the FRBR use
> case as described at [1]:
> 
>    This proposal views descriptions of WEMI entities as bundles of statements
>    made at different levels of abstraction, from the most concrete Item level
>    to the most abstract Work level.  Multi-level WEMI descriptions specify the
>    characteristics that any given Item shares with other Items at the level of
>    Work, Expression, and Manifestation.  Ideally, it would be possible to
>    incorporate descriptions of resources at the Work, Expression, and
>    Manifestation levels, maintained in a distributed manner by various
>    institutions, into the local descriptions of particular Items.  
> 
> (In our discussion a few weeks ago, David wondered whether the inferencing
> requirement expressed therein suggests the need for a graph that holds named
> graphs (nesting) [2].  I'm wondering whether the Layers idea re-frames that 
> question.)

Yes, and neatly too.

Regards,
Dave


> 
> Tom
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2012Apr/0001.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2012/04/11-rdf-wg-irc#T16-15-09
> 
> -- 
> Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>
>

Received on Tuesday, 1 May 2012 00:02:31 UTC