Re: RDF Schema abstract

On 28 November 2013 10:12, Guus Schreiber <guus.schreiber@vu.nl> wrote:
>
>
> On 28-11-13 06:00, Pat Hayes wrote:

>>> RDF Schema provides a simple data-modelling vocabulary for RDF data.
>>> Other publications, including SKOS [ ] and the W3C Recommendation OWL2 [ ],
>>> define more elaborate data models which extend RDFS in various ways.
>
>
> I prefer to leave "simple" out. RDFS is not simple, mainly because it has
> the notion of sub-property, which is a powerful mechanism not present in most
> data-modelling languages (UML has the notion of "Association Class", but that
> is less flexible).

It might still be 'simple'; this just shows some awkwardness in
calling it a 'simple data modeling' language, perhaps? e.g. It might
be a simple language for data modeling, even if not 'simple' by
data-modeling language standards?

> Also, "simple" has a subjective connotation.

Clearly :)

As with RDFa there is quite a different experience for implementors
versus publishers/authors. If I'm just writing claims using RDF/S,
it's straightforward enough to understand that something like
dc:creator refines the more general super-property dc:contributor, and
that if I say that someone is the dc:creator of something it wouldn't
make much sense to simultaneously deny that they were also a
dc:contributor. Authors will need help understanding how domain/range
interact here, but the basic idea is straightforward.

For someone writing an inference engine or trying to optimize database
indices for common query patterns, they might plausibly object to the
use of 'simple' :) Similarly, the publisher experience of RDFa and
Microdata is pretty similar, whereas the parser writers have
significantly more pain with RDFa, to support its various additional
idioms.

Dan

Received on Thursday, 28 November 2013 10:49:49 UTC