RE: design decision regarding integer predicates

Hi, Garret! 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: semantic-web-request@w3.org 
>[mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Garret Wilson
>Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:55 PM
>To: Semantic Web
>Subject: Re: design decision regarding integer predicates
>
>
>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?

Hm, I probably wouldn't have worried about, if you had not asked... ;-)

I am a little bit embarrassed, but: Wouldn't it (from a pure practical point
of view) be ok to just write something like

    :myArray array:hasEntry [
        a array:Entry ; 
        array:index 0 ;
        array:value "this is the first entry" 
        ].

where the prefix "array:" is associated with some Array ontology? 

But I suppose that I completely miss your point here, right?

Cheers,
Michael

>
>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
>>
>
>

--
Dipl.-Inform. Michael Schneider
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe
Abtl. Information Process Engineering (IPE)
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Email: Michael.Schneider@fzi.de
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Received on Wednesday, 26 September 2007 20:34:07 UTC