Re: Well Behaved RDF - Taming Blank Nodes, etc.

On 19 Dec 2012, at 18:16, glenn mcdonald <glenn@furia.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> If you use a UUID you could accidentally make a UUID that someone else has already used.
> Since you are making a claim to a global name, you have this kind of risk that comes with
> it. Writing [] does not have this type of risk.
> 
> UUIDs are especially problematic. You can create a UUID, but how do you prove that you
> created the UUID, and that your definition has priority over someone else's?
> If there is a clash between statements about a UUID who is right? [... etc.]
> 
> But if you can't answer these questions, you can't make IDs at all, and you're going to have problems publishing anything but direct assertions about other people's nodes using other people's predicates. And blank nodes.

"But if you can't answer these questions, you can't make IDs at all", indeed and as I argued in my previous mail this is supported by work by Gareth Evenas. As it happens bnodes are not ids, they are existential quantifiers. We can use bnodes because all they do is provide a hook to make statetmetns about something, without requiring previous agreement on the intension of the name.


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