- From: Garret Wilson <garret@globalmentor.com>
- Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:55:03 -0300
- To: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
In case no one understood my question (hence no replied), let me
rephrase it.
In most instances I think of the integer 5 as being a cardinal number.
If I use the integer 5 as a predicate to an array resource to indicate
the fifth element, I'm using the integer 5, not as a cardinal number,
but as an ordinal number. Is this a semantic discrepancy I should be
worried about?
Garret
Garret Wilson wrote:
>
> Everyone,
>
> I'd appreciate people's thoughts on a certain abstract ontology design
> issue: What are the semantic ramifications of using an integer as a
> predicate in an assertion? (I ask this question in abstract,
> independent of RDF's limitations.) Let me explain:
>
> JavaScript is a very dynamic language in which almost everything
> eventually ends up as an associative map. Even JavaScript arrays are
> sugar-coated associative maps, with each key of the map being the index.
>
> RDF literals have many limitations, but let's ignore them for the
> moment and assume that I have a URI that represents the integer 0. (I
> use OWL or whatever to say that 0 is the same as the typed literal
> "0"^^xsd:Integer, maybe.) Assume further that I'm creating my own
> array type.
>
> The question becomes: would I want to use the integer 0 as a property
> to my array resource? (That is, the triple: {my:Array, integer 0,
> first array element}? Or would I be better off creating a new
> namespace just for indexes? (The latter is similar to what rdf:Seq
> does, with rdf:_1 being a resource distinct from the integer 1.)
>
> In short: what are the semantic ramifications of using an integer as a
> predicate in an assertion? Does that reflect what is happening
> semantically when an element is a member of an array?
>
> Garret
>
Received on Wednesday, 26 September 2007 18:55:48 UTC