RE: true/false in RDF?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@microsoft.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 6:02 PM
> To: Geoff Chappell; Danny Ayers
> Cc: Seth Russell; semantic-web@w3.org
> Subject: RE: true/false in RDF?
> 
> > > unspecified?  And of course, all of it means I *need* RDFS (and
> OWL),
> > > *everywhere*.  Why take such a huge dependency if you don't need to?
> >
> > So if you have 8 boolean properties, you need a minimum of 8 classes
> (or
> 
> If I use Boolean URIs, I don't need *any* classes.
> 
> I'm struggling to see the value in modeling this in any way that
> requires more than zero classes (or OWL) to be defined.

No, but you need 8 properties - take your pick. 

I guess it depends upon what your goals are. You can use RDF as just a graph
representation format without making use of any inference - the value then
comes from the simplicity of the model, the ease of aggregation, and to some
extent the ability of URIs as names to ground the semweb in the web. But you
still end up with the semantics embedded in applications rather than the
data (i.e. machines can't really do any meaningful reasoning). 

OTOH, if you want to begin to migrate some meaning out of the application
and into the data, you have to try to model your data in ways that will
allow the machines to perform meaningful reasoning. Given the current state
of semweb technologies, that means using rdf/owl ontologies because that's
the only way to license inferences. Hopefully more expressive mechanisms
(e.g. rules) will join the party at some point so we don't have to continue
to force feed everything into a classification problem :-) 

- Geoff

Received on Wednesday, 16 March 2005 23:35:18 UTC