Re: How do you deprecate URIs? Re: OWL-DL and linked data

If you want to make a statement about a URI, you need to use a literal
"http:..." or something equivalent, not a reference <http:...>, since in the
latter case you're talking about what the URI names, not the URI itself, and
things can have more than one name - some of which might be deprecated, and
some not.

For example, if http:A and http:B are both names for the same thing, but the
URI http:A is deprecated while http:B is not deprecated, then
   <http:A> rdf:type deprecatedThing .
implies
  <http:B> rdf:type deprecatedThing .
which would contradict
  <http:B> rdf:type notDeprecatedThing .
On the other hand
  "http:A" rdf:type deprecatedURI .
would not contradict
  "http:B" rdf:type notDeprecatedURI .
since the two URIs are different things.

Yes, I know a literal can't be a subject, so you need to find a different
way to say this in RDF.  If you had a name for the party that is doing the
deprecating, you might say
  deprecator deprecates "http:A" .
  deprecator doesNotDeprecate "http:B" .

Instead of saying that <http:A> is a deprecated thing, you could say
  <http:A> rdf:type thingWithDeprecatedURI .
but that doesn't help, does it? It doesn't tell you which of <http:A>'s URIs
is deprecated.
Maybe something like
  <http:A> hasDeprecatedURI "http:A" .
  <http:A> hasNotDeprecatedURI "http:B" .
  <http:B> hasDeprecatedURI "http:A" .
  <http:B> hasNotDeprecatedURI "http:B" .

(and I agree, phrasing statements like this positively is probably better
than phrasing them negatively e.g. "deprecation", but that's a separate
issue.)

Jonathan

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 6:03 AM, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>
wrote:

>
> All
>
> Following my previous message mentioning lingvoj.org URIs, I had a message
> from Earle Martin, early publisher of alternative URIs for languages at
> downlode.org.
> Considering that lingvoj URIs are "better" than his own URIs (thanks), he
> wants the downlode URIs to be flagged as deprecated and replaced by the
> matching lingvoj URIs.
> On my side I want to keep track of those URIs at lingvoj.org, if only for
> backward compatibility, and to acknowledge the pioneering work of Earle in
> this domain. :-)
>
> How should we do that?
>
> My first thought was to flag the downlode.org URIs with something like
> owl:DeprecatedIndividual