Re: Blank nodes as predicates Re: Blank Nodes Re: Toward easier RDF: a proposal

Hi Henry,

On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 at 08:59, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

> The interesting thing seems to be that when one does that, if one takes
> blank nodes to be
> existential quantifiers, as I think we all do, then blank nodes fall out
> automatically in
> predicate position too.
>

Surely the language that falls out of RDF by adding existential quantifiers
in predicate position is a fragment of SPARQL ASK (before adding
disjunction and equality).

E.g.: The following is a fine SPARQL Query (is :a related to :b and :c in
the same way):
ASK { :a ?x :b .
          :a ?x :c }

The closer RDF and SPARQL are, the better. Perhaps, if the development of
RDF and SPARQL had followed more unifying language-design principals (e.g.
institutions), design mismatches may have been reduced. However, now
history has run its course, it's hard to see how institutions can achieve
impact here. Please correct me if you believe otherwise.

There may be some hope. For example, Andy Seaborne's idea of a high level
language for Linked Data, navigational in style [1], has not yet been take
up by the W3C. Such a language might benefit from a more unifying
semantics, in which standards encapsulated are precisely related, informing
language-design decisions.

Kind regards,

Ross

[1]
http://w3-org.9356.n7.nabble.com/SPARQL-friendly-alternative-to-rdf-Lists-td266182.html