RE: incomplete datatyping (was: Re: datatypes and MT)

At 05:51 PM 11/8/01 -0600, Pat Hayes wrote:
>Am I the only person who has no idea what this 
>normative/descriptive/prescriptive contrast means? As far as I am aware, 
>RDF is *entirely* descriptive.

FWIW, I agree.

I can imagine one might define various notions of "schema complete" on top 
of RDF, but that would not be part of RDF, just a way that some 
applications may choose to use it.

(e.g. require that in a given RDF graph, require that every subject/object 
have explicitly stated or deducible type information that conforms to 
explicitly stated or deducible domain/range types of the properties 
used.  I think that one needs to take a "closed world" view to make any 
sense of such an approach.)

Another approach which I suppose *might* be regarded as prescriptive is the 
way that statements act to limit the interpretations that are models.  A 
datatyping scheme that acts to constrain the allowable interpretations 
might in turn cause some RDF graphs to be unsatisfiable.

#g


------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Klyne                    MIMEsweeper Group
Strategic Research              <http://www.mimesweeper.com>
<Graham.Klyne@MIMEsweeper.com>
------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Friday, 9 November 2001 06:16:40 UTC