Re: foaf:page vs. foaf:topic

Personally I don't grok a company's website as a "topic".  How about ...
 foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
                      gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp."
                      gr:principleWebsite  <http://www.microsoft.com/>.
and inversely ...
<http://www.microsoft.com/> gr:principleWebsiteOf foo:microsoft .

Now a person doesn't necessarily have a principleWebsite, see all of
mine below, even though they don't have namespaces.  Thing is the more
precise you want to model something, the more trying to force your
descriptions into generalized words breaks down.  You need to kind of
decide the level of precision that you are targeting.  If you are too
precise, then you will end up turning off a lot of people and they
won't bother coding in your vocabulary.  If you are too general, then
you end up saying essentially nothing.  For me foaf:topic and
rdfs:seeAlso err on the latter side.

Lot's of luck making the right choice.

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Martin Hepp (UniBW)
<martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> In the context of the GoodRelations ontology, there is a regular need to
> link
>
> 1. a data entity (e.g. representing a company, a product, or an offer)
>
> with
>
> 2. the URI of a XHTML/HTML Web Resource that contains human-readable
> information about that entity (often combining the info for multiple such
> entities, i.e. it is NOT a direct representation of the data entity).
>
> Example: We define Microsoft as a business entity in our own namespace and
> want to preserve a link to the established, browsable resource.
>
> foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
>                       gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp.".
>
> Up to now, we generally use and recommend rdfs:seeAlso for the link from the
> data entity to the Web page URI, e.g.
>
> foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
>                       gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp.";
>                        rdfs:seeAlso <http://www.microsoft.com/>.
>
> Note that we cannot simply do content negotiation (i.e. redirect http
> requests for html to http://www.microsoft.com), because of practical and
> theoretical reasons. Also, content negotiation is IMO no substitute for a
> traversable link from the data node to the HTML node in the graph of data).
>
> The initial motivation for rdfs:seeAlso was that it does not require
> importing a second ontology like FOAF, and I would also hold that using
> rdfs:seeAlso is, in principle, correct.
>
> However, due to the growing amount of links on the Web of Linked Data,
> rdfs:seeAlso is now being used so frequently that it has become too
> unspecific for our purpose.
> If there are 20+ rdfs:seeAlso links from an entity,  e.g. to images and
> other resources, it's hard for a user agent to spot the single one link that
> points to the Web page, e.g. for actually buying a product.
>
> Now, the two main candidate predicates for replacing rdfs:seeAlso are IMHO
>
> 1. foaf:topic
> and
> 2. foaf:page.
>
> I have seen many usages of foaf:topic in such scenarios, but from reading
> the FOAF spec, I think that foaf:page is much more appropriate.
>
> Proposed Pattern:
>
> foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
>                       gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp.";
>                       foaf:page <http://www.microsoft.com/>.
>
> foaf:topic could be used for linking back from the Web page URI to the data
> entity URI, e.g.
>
> <http://www.microsoft.com/> foaf:topic foo:microsoft.
>
> What's your opinion on that? Will that work with your software applications?
> Or should we use foaf:topic instead? If so, in which direction?
>
> Alternative 1:
>
> foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
>                       gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp.".
>
> <http://www.microsoft.com/> foaf:topic foo:microsoft.
>
> Alternative 2:
>
> foo:microsoft a gr:BusinessEntity;
>                       gr:legalName "Microsoft Corp.";
>                       foaf:topic <http://www.microsoft.com/>.
>
> I personally think that the second alternative is wrong, because the data
> entity does not describe the Web page, but vice versa.
>
> Since this decision will be important for compatibility with SemWeb /
> Linkedata applications, I would be very thankful for your comments.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Martin Hepp
>
> --
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org
> phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
> fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>        http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
>
> Project page:
> http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
> Resources for developers:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations
>
> Webcasts:
> Overview - http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/
> How-to   - http://vimeo.com/7583816
>
> Recipe for Yahoo SearchMonkey:
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_and_Yahoo_SearchMonkey
>
> Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009: "Semantic Web-based
> E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
> http://www.slideshare.net/mhepp/semantic-webbased-ecommerce-the-goodrelations-ontology-1535287
>
> Overview article on Semantic Universe:
> http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-web-based-e-commerce-webmasters-get-ready.html
>
> Tutorial materials:
> ISWC 2009 Tutorial: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in Brief: A Hands-on
> Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
> http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Web_of_Data_for_E-Commerce_Tutorial_ISWC2009
>
>
>



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Received on Saturday, 13 February 2010 14:12:10 UTC