Re: Reifying triples as unique URIs

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Max Völkel wrote:

> Version 3)
> ---------
> Unique Relations
> 
> This  is  a  new idea, that I haven't seen discussed anywhere - that's
> why  I post this email. The idea is: In some way, the relation between
> two things is unique. So we represent
> (a,b,c)
> as (a,x,c), (x rdfs:subPropertyOf b).
> We  use  b  as  the  type of the relation, x is a random unique URI (I
> don't like blank nodes).

Despite the fact that they seem ideal for this case :-)

> What  do  you think about the idea to reify triples as unique property
> URIs? Has this been discussed elsewhere?
> 
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
>   Max Völkel

This was certainly suggested as an option for foaf chat ids a few years
ago, but I can't find the discussion.

The issue was that there are many systems where one might have an
account, and having to create a property for each (such as
foaf:icqChatID) seems like it could have problems in the long run. If we
could qualify foaf:nick, mentioning the system the nick is for, then
that seems a better solution.

Of course you can't qualify properties, but the bnode property trick was
a suggestion.

_:damian _:nick "pldms" .
_:nick rdfs:subPropertyOf foaf:nick ;
	ex:onSystem <...icq...> .

Try writing that in RDF/XML :-)

Now we have foaf:OnlineAccount, which achieves a similar thing.

_:damian foaf:holdsAccount [ foaf:accountName "pldms" ; 			
foaf:accountServiceHomepage <...icq...> ] .

This is really the n-ary relation modelling problem, and could have done
something like:

[] ex:holder _:damian ; ex:nick "pldms" ; ex:system <...icq...> .

You might want to look at [1] about this.

Damian

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-n-aryRelations/>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE12NZAyLCB+mTtykRAjobAKDSkTdw/4d1v7veN4tct76XRhPvXACeJ+U6
EsDqWrN0hkVkBSWrzSj3BWk=
=RXuC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Received on Monday, 7 August 2006 15:59:38 UTC