- From: Garret Wilson <garret@globalmentor.com>
- Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:00:42 -0700
- To: Frank Manola <fmanola@acm.org>
- CC: Story Henry <henry.story@bblfish.net>, Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
Frank Manola wrote: > > I understand, but notice that NaN isn't really an example of the kind > of general null you're talking about (one that can be used with > arbitrary properties, as in the case of relational nulls). Rather, > it's a *type-specific* (to floating point numbers) value that has a > type-specific meaning, and where stuff like comparisons, what happens > if they're used in further operations and statistical functions, etc. > has been worked out. Good point. > I'd like to see semantic frameworks be more strongly typed too (that > is, in the sense that there's some way of specifying all the > information I have about the situation to be modeled; not necessarily > that I want things as rigid as is sometimes implied by "strongly > typed"). But I don't necessarily see that a general null that, in > order to be used with arbitrary properties (taking values of arbitrary > types) might need to mean different things for different types, > contributes to "strong typing". It seems to me more likely to muddle > things up. All good points. I'm going to do some researching and thinking. Thanks---this helps immensely. Garret
Received on Saturday, 20 October 2007 21:01:40 UTC