Ill-typed vs. inconsistent?

What's the relevance of the distinction between “graphs containing ill-typed literals” and “inconsistent graphs” in the Semantics?

The text stresses that the presence of an ill-typed literals does not constitute an inconsistency.

But why does the distinction matter? Is there any reason anybody needs to know about this distinction who isn't interested in the arcana of the model theory?

From the perspective of someone who authors RDF data, or works with RDF data, they both seem like belonging to the same class of problem, and I'm a bit at a loss as to how to explain the difference.

(I know how both terms are defined and what conditions exactly cause them; the question is about why the spec insists that ill-typed literals do not cause a graph to be inconsistent.)

Best,
Richard

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2012 19:13:55 UTC