Re: Self-descriptive assertions

On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 11:37:42AM -0500, Bijan Parsia wrote:
> >??  I'm only interested, right now, in knowing whether the *publisher*
> >of that information asserts it.
> 
> And the right answer should be, IMHO, "It depends".  So I'm against a 
> blanket mandate, especially in the media type.
> 
> Who counts as the publisher? The owner of the server?

Yes - the authority of the URI.  I understand that isn't sufficient for
all cases, but it seems a reasonable starting point to me.

> >>(And will this affect, oh, DAWG? I.e., if I want to use an
> >>application/rdf+xml as a query "by example", I won't be able to 
> >>because
> >>it's asserted? I.e., my query wants to be *is* this bit of RDF/XML
> >>asserted by you.)
> >
> >I can't make sense of that, but it looks interesting 8-)  Can you
> >elaborate please?
> 
> A question generally isn't an assertion. If my question is basically an 
> RDF/XML document (e.g., "is this graph true") then, on your scenario, 
> if I am the publisher of my query, then it can't have normal query 
> semantics.

Only if you use that media type.  See below.

> I understand now. Ok, it was responsive. What you didn't realize is 
> that this group has been moribund for a while. Perhaps this will revive 
> things.

That is my hope, yes.

> >I respectfully suggest that
> >your concern would be best directed at "other useful uses of RDF/XML
> >documents", which I agree with.  But I don't see how my suggestion
> >interferes with that in general, nor specifically for aggregation.
> 
> So, there's the duel problem: How someone indicates that *they've* 
> asserted such and such rdf. And how someone indicates that they've 
> *not* asserted such and such RDF.

Yes.

> Inside RDF, the quoting mechanisms 
> are, in a world, lame. (Reification, but reification is lame. Or 
> literals, but that  doesn't seem to be to most people's taste.)

Yup. 8-)

> But let me back up: I don't see how media type does the job you want. 
> How does media type help acertain who's the publisher?

As above, it doesn't, the URI does that.  But I agree that richer
mechanisms will be required in the future.

> Do we really 
> want to force publishers to assert all the RDF they publish? (I think, 
> not. This was discussed extensively, I believe, in my last call 
> comments.)

No, but if they want to publish unasserted RDF, then a new media type
could be created for that purpose.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:33:13 UTC