A synthesis for #rdfms-resource-semantics

Hurried summary before the conference call: sorry if not everyone gets
to read their email before the meeting.

Perhaps we can to draw things together on 

http://www.w3.org/2000/03/rdf-tracking/Overview.html#rdfms-resource-semantics 

Brian and I both feel a need to get a consensus on our basic vocabulary
and there have been enough people saying that they `know' what a
resource is in their hearts. Perhaps most of us think the same way (with
just a few people having to adjust in a small way).

The three words URI, resource and entity are bandied about. 

Entities are `things in the world' from Web pages (which are easy) to
`trees in the park' (which are hard). Two aspects are used by many to
nail entities. One is the retrieval form (a page is what the network
delivers) but this becomes difficult with trees and indeed people. For
people we have the `a person is not just their DNA' idea: we are all
aware of our own identity across time and space. Also Jos De Roo makes a
significant point in defining the global set of `entities' to be a set
of (set of states of an entity), thus reminding us that an entity has a
biography across which some useful sort of identity is preserved.
Aaron's (and others') references to real web pages changing or being
mirrored should also be acknowledged.

URIs are the means with which we point to entities but this is done via
the concept of `resource'.

We seem to have a majority vote for URIS matching resources closely
(URIs are unique labels for resources) but that resources may be used to
refer to entities as required. This may mean multiple resources
representing (a difficult word) the `same' entity but we may acknowledge
that different resources may indicate different aspects of an entity or
different subsets of that entity's states (`the entity in all its
forms').

Thus put very blandly: URI=resource->entity

Am I picking up the right messages? I suggest we base a vocabulary on a
(better written) form of these ideas.

-- 
Martyn Horner <martyn.horner@profium.com>
Profium (former name Pro Solutions), Les Espaces de Sophia,
Immeuble Delta, B.P. 037, F-06901 Sophia-Antipolis, France
Tel. +33 (0)4.93.95.31.44 Fax. +33 (0)4.93.95.52.58
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Received on Friday, 11 May 2001 09:12:12 UTC