Re: Sloppy inference rules

Hi David,

I appreciate what you are saying, and I'm sure we are all aware of the 
restrictions imposed by the charter. However I have to disagree that 
this forum (the RDF WG) is not the logical place for this discussion to 
happen.

Literals as subjects (and bnodes as predicates) can only really be 
handled by the RDF WG, this one, or the next - and a less noisy 
discussion, between those who are most informed on the subject, may be 
very beneficial.

Is it worth pointing out that if enough people do want and need them, 
then it seems a given that one day an almost-rdf / subserset of rdf 
which handles literals as subject and bnode predicates will be 
specified, supported by some tools and gain traction - I personally feel 
this is less of an issue as to if it will happen, and more an issue of a 
when, and the questions is what interoperability issues would arise - it 
may be worth fleshing out, even if it isn't to end up in any of the 
published documents.

Again though, I appreciate it's been deemed out of scope, but also 
appreciate it that members of the WG keep raising it back up again, so 
it must be of some concern.

Best,

Nathan


David Wood wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Everyone is reminded of our charter restrictions [1]:
> [[
> Some features are explicitly out of scope for the Working Group:
> 
> - Changing the fundamentals RDF(S) semantics (e.g., usage of model theoretical semantics, interpretation of blank nodes). Note that minor improvements may be required by some of the work in the scope of the Working Group, which is still in the scope of the work.
> - Removing current restrictions in the RDF model (e.g., literals not allowed as subjects, or blank nodes as predicates)
> ]]
> 
> This working group will not be dealing with literals as subjects.  Perhaps this discussion would make more sense in another forum, such as SWIG?  Thanks.
> 
> Regards,
> Dave
> --
> http://about.me/david_wood
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/01/rdf-wg-charter in section "Out of Scope"
> 
> 
> 
> On Oct 30, 2012, at 12:15, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:
> 
>> One of the potential semantic issues that Guus has dug up probably should be discussed by the whole group, so I will try to state the essence of it from Herman's message  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005OctDec/0003.html. 
>>
>> It concerns a subtlety of RDFS entailment involving blank nodes. 
>>
>> Consider the following graph:
>>
>> :prop1 rdfs:subProperty :prop2
>> :prop2 rdfs:Domain :Class
>> :a :prop1 :b
>>
>> This RDFS-entails 
>>
>> :a :type :Class
>>
>> No problem there; but if we replace :prop2 by a blank node:
>>
>> :prop1 rdfs:subProperty _:x
>> _:x rdfs:Domain :Class
>> :a :prop1 :b
>>
>> it still RDFS-entails 
>>
>> :a :type :Class
>>
>> but, as Herman notes, the inference rules as given don't handle this case. As he also notes, if RDF were to allow blank nodes in property position of triples, this would solve the problem: the rules as given would then cover this case. In 2005 it seemed kind of obvious that any future modification of RDF would indeed allow blank nodes in property position, just like it was obvious it would allow literals in subject position. However, those heady 2005 days are now a fading dream.
>>
>> I do not know of any reasonable way to add rules which can cover this kind of case without putting a blank node into the property position of a triple. The unreasonable way is just to add a special rule to handle this case, but then there will be other cases also, eg involving ranges instead of domains, and indeed involving any property of properties, eg subproperty chaining, which can go arbitrarily deep and so would need a potential infinity of rules. And RDF semantic extensions will need to extend these cases if they do anything with properties. It is very hard to know that you have covered all the cases when the only available strategy is to think of them all and list them all.
>>
>> For a similar reason, the rules as stated could be very much simpler if literals were to be allowed in subject position, since then the special ("silly") rules used to insert blank nodes in place of literals would just be handled by graph matching, in the same way that other bnode entailments are captured.  
>>
>> In both cases, the problem arises because RDF imposes syntactic restrictions which are semantically meaningless, and the "illegal" expressions not only make perfect sense, but are actually needed to record perfectly valid entailments. 
>>
>> So my question to the WG is, how disastrous would it be if the RDFS inference rules were stated in terms of a 'sloppy' version of RDF with the syntactic restrictions removed, i.e. with the following grammar for triples?
>>
>> triple ::= term term term .
>> term ::=  IRI | blanknode | literal
>>
>> The idea would be that inference could be done by applying the rules to exhaustion, then throwing away any triple that isn't RDF legal. (Other strategies are also possible.) And the point being, that there are inference paths from legal RDF graphs to legal RDF triples that go through derivations that involve triples which are syntactically illegal but make perfect semantic sense. For example, in the case above, the derivation would be 
>>
>> :a :prop1 :b .
>> :a _:x :b   	by the subproperty rule
>> :a :type :Class   by the Domain rule
>>
>> The only alternative that I can see is to just admit that the rules are incomplete, and explain why. 
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> Pat
>>
>> PS. AFAIK, no inference requires literals in predicate position, in fact, so we could be slightly less sloppy: bnodes and IRIs anywhere, literals fore and aft. 
>>
>>
>> On Oct 30, 2012, at 5:32 AM, Guus Schreiber wrote:
>>
>>> I did a scan of the comments received on
>>>
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/
>>>
>>> from Feb 2004 onwards. Below is the result. To be on the safe side I included all threads that were not explicitly either closed or added to the errata list.
>>>
>>> I expect most of the comments below to have been dealt with. The comments still need to be sorted wrt the document concerned.
>>>
>>> Guus
>>>
>>>
>>> POTENTIAL ISSUES
>>>
>>> Media types and assertions, Mark Baker
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JanMar/0075.html
>>>
>>> RDF Keys, Bob McGregor
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JanMar/0089.html
>>>
>>> Inconsistency in RDF spec, Bill Davis
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004AprJun/0018.html
>>>
>>> Implementation feedback
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JulSep/0007.html
>>>
>>> Difficulty with syntax spec, Klyne
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JulSep/0004.html
>>>
>>> Pls warn against untested hooks, DanC
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005JanMar/0003.html
>>>
>>> RDF Semantics / error in RDFS entailment lemma, ter Horst
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005OctDec/0003.html
>>>
>>> RDF validator, Firefox
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2006AprJun/0000.html
>>>
>>> Comment on RDF Model Theory, Jeremy Carrol
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007AprJun/0001.html
>>>
>>> N-Triples MIME type should not be text/plain, Tim Berners-Lee
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0001.html
>>>
>>>
>>> ERRATA
>>>
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2011JulSep/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2011AprJun/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2011JanMar/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2010OctDec/0002.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2010OctDec/0001.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2010JanMar/0002.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2010JanMar/0001.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2010JanMar/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2009OctDec/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2009JanMar/0005.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2008OctDec/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2008JulSep/0003.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2008JulSep/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2008JanMar/0003.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0018.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0006.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0005.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0004.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0003.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007OctDec/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2007JulSep/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2006JanMar/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005AprJun/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005JanMar/0028.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2005JanMar/0001.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004OctDec/0001.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004OctDec/0000.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JulSep/0013.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JulSep/0005.html
>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2004JulSep/0002.html
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>

Received on Sunday, 25 November 2012 01:27:19 UTC