What is it that's wrong with rdf:List

Greetings.

What is it that's so wrong/bad/wicked with rdf:List?  Can anyone point me to some reading?

I have the impression that 'everyone knows that' rdf:List is bad in some way, but can't find any explicit account of what's so very wrong with it.  This is a pity, because I find myself wanting to use it.

The page at [1] implies in passing that rdf:List represents 'bad modelling practice'.  [2] is an (unanswered) list question about rdf:List making an ontology OWL Full (which is clearly awkward if you want to do reasoning with things, but less so if you simply want to express things).  [3] suggests ... well, I'm not completely clear what it suggests, but it seems that rdf:List isn't favourite for expressing lists.

And what's the alternative, if I want to say in RDF that a particular thing is related to an ordered set of other things -- perhaps an article has a particular sequence of authors?  [4] refers to an OWLList ontology (and a broken link to a rationale).  I follow how that ontology works, but don't get the significance of the apparently minor ways in which it's different from rdf:List.

Thanks for any pointers.  Best wishes,

Norman


[1] http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/RDF_list_vocabulary
[2] http://osdir.com/ml/misc.ontology.protege.owl/2004-04/msg00761.html
[3] http://oxfordrepo.blogspot.com/2009/02/pushing-bagit-manifest-concept-little.html
[4] http://www.co-ode.org/ontologies/lists/2008/09/11/

-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk

Received on Thursday, 17 June 2010 22:20:14 UTC