Re: Comments on RDF Spaces document

On 30 May 2012, at 01:25, Sandro Hawke wrote:
>> I think it contains *lots* of things that I see no motivation for and that I think we shouldn't define. I think that something much shorter and simpler is perfectly sufficient.
…
> My main concern with doing it like you suggest is that I think having
> more text is likely to help folks understand what we're talking about.

To help folks understand what we're talking about, I prefer lots of small examples over more text.

> I'm thinking the use cases and worked-example could turn into a WG Note
> or some sort of Datasets Primer, and that would probably serve.

That's ok with me.

> I have some trouble with the subset semantics, too, but several people
> in the WG were very strongly in favor of them.   They wanted it to be
> the case that:
> 
>   :a { :b :c 1 }
> and
>   :a { :b :c 2 }
> entails
>   :a { :b :c 1,2 }
> 
> With complete-graph semantics those two datasets contract each other.  I
> think the logic is clear, but that's not the answer people wanted to
> hear.
> 
> This is the place I'm feeling most stuck right now.  Today, I came up
> with a (federated phonebook) use case that reveals this: people want to
> use the phone book to find out whether someone is a member of the staff
> or not.  They would like to make the assumption that if someone is not
> listed, then they are not a staff member.   And the feeds from some
> divisions are complete, so this can be done for the staff of that
> division.  But other divisions have only partial data.  How can HQ
> convey in the dataset given to phonebook display software which graphs
> are complete in their listing of employees of that division

+1. I would like to have the ability to close the world over a particular graph or set of graphs.

>>> B Folding
>> 
>> If you want to convey a dataset, then why not use a dataset syntax? What is the use of turning a perfectly fine dataset into a stinking triple tarpit? Why clutter the RDF namespace with a Reification 2.0 Vocabulary?
> 
> I keep thinking of the folks at the workshop who were adamant that
> RDF/XML is still crucial to their vast projects and business plans.

But their vast projects and business plans doesn't rely on exchanging datasets at the moment, or if it does, then they have already somehow solved that problem for themselves. Why should we encourage them to re-tool to your reification-on-steroids proposal, rather than encourage them towards using a proper dataset syntax?

> I'm fine with moving this to the Note, or whatever, until/unless someone
> complains.

I am complaining. Let us just not do this unless someone actually speaks up saying they need to be able to exchange RDF datasets using RDF/XML and absolutely positively can't use N-Quads.

Best,
Richard

Received on Wednesday, 30 May 2012 08:43:10 UTC