Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Lot's of interesting questions in here, so I'll wade in on a basic one.

On Jul 7, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Chris Bizer wrote:

> Question 1: According to the terminology of the Architecture of the  
> WWW document [4] are all these URIs aliases for the same non- 
> information resource (our current view) or are they referring to  
> different resources?

This isn't a question that the web architecture can answer. This is a  
question of what the publishers of those URI's say they mean to  
denote by those URIs, or alternatively, what a community of users  
agrees these URIs shall denote. Arguably, I'll offer, the second  
matters more, web architecture pronouncements notwithstanding.

> Question 3: Depending on the answer to question 1, is it correct to  
> use owl:sameAs [6] to state that http://www.w3.org/People/Berners- 
> Lee/card#i and http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee refer to  
> the same thing as it is done in Tim's profile.

It is only correct to say this if http://dbpedia.org/resource/ 
Tim_Berners-Lee is intended by the authors of dbpedia to denote TimBl  
the person, as http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i is said my  
Tim to denote himself, this last which I believe. Alternatively, you  
can hold each set of RDF statements suspect, along the lines of "if I  
believe TimBL, and that this resource is an accurate reflection of  
his views, then I believe http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee  
is sameas http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i. However, this  
modal statement goes outside what can be said with RDF alone (or OWL  
alone).

In other words, you can only answer these questions, at base, by  
asking what was intended by the authors of the URIs, or by having a  
theory that discounts their inten

Based on that, you may find that the implementation of what happens  
when you do an HTTP GET against these URIs
either does or does not conform to the published standards for what  
should happen in either case, and/or decide whether you think the  
standards are adequate or not for communicating what is necessary for  
some agent to use productively.

Received on Monday, 9 July 2007 16:52:02 UTC