Re: potential edit for Concepts section 1.7

On 07/10/2013 09:13 AM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> On 7/10/13 11:40 AM, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
>> An entailment regime [RDF-MT] is a specification that defines precise
>> conditions that make these relationships hold. RDF itself recognizes only
>> some basic cases of entailment, equivalence and inconsistency.
> Doesn't this imply that entailment is a defining characteristic of RDF  
> i.e., the mechanism for RDF claims/statements interpretation?

That's certainly my view.   My understanding is that the RDF Semantics came 
into being because there were issues with the original version of RDF (at 
least some having to do with blank nodes, but some also not having to do with 
blank nodes) that could not be solved without resorting to some sort of 
semantics for RDF.
>
> I ask because in recent times, there appears to be a line of thought that 
> doesn't consider entailment as being the mechanism that's intrinsic to RDF.

Well, somehow one has to figure out how to handle things like

ex:foo rdfs:range xsd:integer .
ex:bar ex:foo "57"^^xsd:int .

or

ex:foop rdfs:range ex:Person .
ex:barp ex:foop ex:john .

Is the first internally consistent?  Is the second internally consistent?  In 
the second, does ex:john belong to ex:Person?

>
> Basically, a piece of structured data  is interpretable as RDF because an 
> RDF processor understands RDF entailment.
>

Well, sort of.

peter

Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2013 16:26:12 UTC