Re: URIs

I would just want to chime in and endorse what others have said -  
that this is an EXTREMELY important issue to provide some clarity on  
for the community.

Many folks in neuroinformatics, for instance, are interested in  
knowing more about the practical issues involved in moving toward an  
RDF (and OWL, when appropriate) representation of their data (and/or  
web-based APIs), but usually get stuck on two issues related to URIs:
	1) how does one translate current references in XML docs (or  
databases for that matter) to URIs;
	2) once I've figured out '1', what can I expect to get, when while  
processing the resulting RDF, I need to go from URI to "real" object  
- digital or otherwise.

These two issues alone have created a lot of confusion and may be the  
primary issues holding up adoption of RDF - at least in the neuro- 
domain.

I would also say the confusion may also be due large to ignorance of  
the RDF spec docs.  However, there needs to be a more, practical,  
specific roadmap for use of URIs than the spec can supplied -  
something very much along the lines that Alan is trying work out here  
as a result of these discussions.

Cheers,
Bill


On Jun 19, 2006, at 10:31 AM, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:

>
> Dereference, in that context, means something different than what I  
> was using the term for.
> They mean that there has to be a definition of the subject and  
> object in the OWL file or one of the imports.
>
> I was using it to mean, go to the network and do a geturl of the  
> uri and do something with the results. OWL and RDF doesn't specify  
> that you do that. That would certainly not work, since most of the  
> URLs prior to the semantic web don't have RDF or OWL content.
>
> -Alan
>
> On Jun 19, 2006, at 7:03 AM, John Barkley wrote:
>
>> According
>> to:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/#Property and
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_range, subjects and objects of
>> properties are "instances" of classes which means they dereference.
>> Presumably, the names we define will be used early on as subjects  
>> and/or
>> objects of ObjectProperties. Unless the names are only to be  
>> objects in
>> DatatypeProperties, then they should dereference to their  
>> definitions as an
>> individual of a class.
>
>

Bill Bug
Senior Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)


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Received on Monday, 19 June 2006 14:44:46 UTC