Re: [Linking-open-data] Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Hi all

I suggested earlier in this thread (but it's been long and tricky to 
follow - please note I trimmed the cc list) to use simply "description". 
But maybe it's also too ambiguous (regarding e.g., rdf:Description)?
I'm not too much in favor of "redescription", which (at least for the 
French-native speaker that I am) seems to mean "new description".
I like pretty much "infon" because of its quantic flavor. The "infon" 
being what you get from an interaction with the network, and it really 
looks in many respects like a quantic event.
BTW seems to me that such a concept is independent of the nature of the 
resource (information resource or not, whether such a distinction is 
sustainable or not - I prefer to be agnostic about it here) :-)

Bernard

Pat Hayes a écrit :
>> Hi Frank,
>>
>>     
>>> I'd seriously suggest you look for some 
>>> alternative  to "data item" for the concept in 
>>> question.
>>>       
>> OK, but this leads to a question which I 
>> accutally wanted to try to avoid asking on this 
>> list.
>>
>> Hmm, I will do it anyway and see what happens ;-)
>>
>> Question 4: What term should we use instead?
>>     
>
> Using the heuristic principle that an artificial 
> coinage is less likely to cause confusion than 
> re-using an existing term with a new meaning, how 
> about 'transmit' used as a noun? What you get 
> back from dereferencing the URI is either a 
> representation<sub>REST</sub> of the resource, 
> when its an information resource, or else 
> a >>transmit<< which describes (in some broad 
> sense) the resource, if its a non-information 
> resource.
>
> Or, if this seems too peculiar, call it the 
> 'represented description' or 'redirected 
> description'. Either of these could be 
> abbreviated to 'redescription', which is 
> (arguably) an English word that hasn't been 
> technically re-used too much yet. Because 
> according to your definition, its relationship to 
> the resource is being a description of it, and to 
> the URI is being the 
> representation<sub>REST</sub> of the resource to 
> which the first http endpoint redirects to.
>
> Yet another possibility which will confuse only a 
> vanishingly small set of people is 'infon', taken 
> from situation theory where it means something 
> like a coherent chunk of information about 
> something.
>
> Pat
>
>   
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> --
>> Chris Bizer
>> Freie Universität Berlin
>> Phone: +49 30 838 54057
>> Mail: chris@bizer.de
>> Web: www.bizer.de
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Manola" <fmanola@acm.org>
>> To: "Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de>
>> Cc: "Tim Berners-Lee" <timbl@w3.org>; 
>> <www-tag@w3.org>; <semantic-web@w3.org>; 
>> "Linking Open Data" 
>> <linking-open-data@simile.mit.edu>
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 6:07 PM
>> Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data
>>
>>     
>>> Chris--
>>>
>>> I appreciate that we run into terminology 
>>> conflicts all the time around here, but I'd 
>>> seriously suggest you look for some alternative 
>>> to "data item" for the concept in question.  An 
>>> awful lot of people (particularly those 
>>> involved with databases) are used to seeing 
>>> "data  item" refer to something like a property 
>>> or attribute (like "name" or  "age").  More 
>>> specifically, they're used to seeing records as 
>>> containing multiple data items (or their 
>>> values).  From that point of  view, the 
>>> sentence "When you interpret the Web of Data as 
>>> a set of  interlinked databases, a data item 
>>> would equal a record in a specific  database." 
>>> looks particularly strange.  As I say, I 
>>> understand the  inevitability of terminology 
>>> conflicts, but ...?
>>>
>>> Cheers!
>>>
>>> --Frank
>>>
>>> On Jul 25, 2007, at 10:12 AM, Chris Bizer wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> I can't think of a term for "the information 
>>>>> which you get about the thing identified by 
>>>>> it  when you look up a URI" which works for 
>>>>> me.
>>>>>           
>>>>> It has of course the term "Representation" 
>>>>> which connects an Information Resource and 
>>>>> the (metadata, bits) pair which you get back, 
>>>>> which is different.
>>>>>           
>>>> As we did not want to repeat the definition 
>>>> all over the tutorial, we ended up with a term 
>>>> called "data item".
>>>>
>>>> Within section 2.1 of the tutorial, we define 
>>>> the term as: "The term data items refers to 
>>>> the description of a non-information resource 
>>>> that a client obtains by dereferencing a 
>>>> specific URI that identifies this 
>>>> non-information resource." 
>>>> (http://sites.wiwiss.fu- 
>>>> berlin.de/suhl/bizer/pub/LinkedDataTutorial/#aliases)
>>>>
>>>> Note that the definition is a bit more 
>>>> specific than your sentence above, as it is 
>>>> restricted to non-information resources and 
>>>> not things in general (assuming that your term 
>>>> "thing" refers to non- information resources 
>>>> as well as information resources).
>>>>
>>>> We were also struggling to find a good word 
>>>> that matches the concept and have chosen "data 
>>>> item" in the end as it somehow relates to the 
>>>> overall term "Linked Data" and as we hope that 
>>>> people from the database community will 
>>>> understand the second informal definition of 
>>>> the term: "When you interpret the Web of Data 
>>>> as a set of interlinked databases, a data item 
>>>> would equal a record in a specific database."
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>>
>>>> Chris
>>>>         
>
>
>   

-- 

*Bernard Vatant
*Knowledge Engineering
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Received on Thursday, 26 July 2007 08:52:45 UTC