- From: Holger Knublauch <holger@topquadrant.com>
- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2018 09:22:01 +1000
- To: Graham Klyne <gk@ninebynine.org>, semantic-web@w3.org
On 22/11/2018 10:21 PM, Graham Klyne wrote: > On 22/11/2018 00:38, Holger Knublauch wrote: >> Would you mind clarifying this statement a bit? What practical >> benefits would >> the foundation on formal logic add to a future (simplified) RDF, for >> average >> users? I have seen plenty of evidence that some aspects of the semantic >> technology stack are being regarded as too academic, and that the >> role of formal >> logic has been one driver of this detachment. Related topics are the >> non-unique-name-assumption and the open world assumption that are >> typically >> neither understood nor expected by average users. > > Jumping in, if I may... > > My view is that the formal logic underpinning of RDF serves (at least) > one important (and not-so-academic) purpose: > > Given two distinct RDF graphs that are taken to be descriptions of > some world or context, following the procedure of RDF graph merging > guarantees that the resulting graph is true of that world exactly when > the individual graphs are true of that world. Sorry, I cannot follow this explanation. What do you mean with a graph being true of a world? Could you maybe give a practical example? > > To my mind, this underpins the (open-world?) idea of being able to > meaningfully combine RDF information from independent sources. > (Without implying any guarantee of absolute truth, whatever that may be.) In my viewpoint, an RDF graph is primarily a data structure - a set of triples. Combining RDF triples produces another data structure as the union of these triples. That's it. BTW neither SPARQL nor Turtle nor many other RDF-based standards require "open world", so this interpretation could be made entirely optional. Holger
Received on Thursday, 22 November 2018 23:22:30 UTC