> > things that we haven't given a name. For example when my wife was > pregnant, there was a growing embryo that we didn't name for a while. > A bnode might be used to represent that growing to-be child. > This, like many examples people give of things you'd use a blank node for, misses the point. The embryo may not have a name yet, but it has a gender and a conception date and a size and a nucal transparency, is the subject of ultrasound imaging, etc. It isn't a logical abstraction, it's a specific entity. It should have a URI. This might sound tangential, but I contend that you'll have a much easier time talking about blank nodes clearly if you stick to using them, even in examples, only in cases where they're actually required: to state an existential quantification, like "somebody must have seen the crash", not just to talk about a specific individual for whom we're just missing some information. (But then, I also contend that this whole concept should be moved out of RDF into OWL.)
Received on Wednesday, 18 May 2011 18:03:14 UTC