Re: heading toward datatyping telecon

>A few musings, to borrow Graham's term.
>
>As I understand Pat's proposal, the main idea requires literals to 
>be subjects.

It doesn't REQUIRE it, but it sure would be much neater if they could be.

>  Now, RDF/XML doesn't allow us to represent literals as subjects and 
>we have decided that extending it is out of charter.

Well, this is true insofar as RDF literals are concerned, but
not "literal data values" in general, per se.

One can encode typed data literal values in URVs (URIs) and
in such a form one has explicit data typing information about
the value (think of the URV as a complex data object with
embedded type identity in a weakly typed system) -- and thereby
those values can also serve as subjects of statements because
they are proper resources.

And no changes to RDF are required. Only perhaps some rules
of interpretation and/or equivalence between such URV forms
and qualified anonymous nodes specified for rdf:type (such
as defined in my X-Values concept).

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Monday, 5 November 2001 03:36:49 UTC