containers: primer material

I'm trying to write a (hopefully brief) description of containers for 
the Primer, and a couple of questions came up.  The questions are:

1.  can I legally create a container resource (say, a Bag) without using 
any special syntax, simply by using the ordinary RDF/XML techniques for 
creating a blank node, and giving it the appropriate properties 
(including the type property pointing to the pre-defined rdf:Bag 
resource, and the various li (or explicit _number) properties)?

2.  can I also legally create a container resource that has a URI (i.e., 
that *isn't* a blank node), by using the ordinary RDF/XML techniques for 
creating a new resource with an ID, and giving it those same appropriate 
properties (e.g., a type property pointing to one of the pre-defined 
container type resources)?

Note 1:  since the above involves essentially the "manual" creation of 
container resources, if this is legit, ought we to have a constraint 
that says that the same container can't have multiple rdf:type 
properties that have inconsistent values (like the same container being 
both a bag and an alt;  on the other hand, how would we enforce it?)

Note 2:  the syntax or test cases documents may well answer these 
questions, but I'm neither a RDF/XML nor a N-triples parser (and also, 
I'm lazy), so please don't refer me to them.  Also, please don't refer 
me to prior RDF Core documented resolutions on containers.  I've read 
them, and can't figure out what they mean (one of the reasons why I'm 
trying to explain this stuff in the Primer)!

 

Thanks for any light you can shed.

--Frank


-- 
Frank Manola                   The MITRE Corporation
202 Burlington Road, MS A345   Bedford, MA 01730-1420
mailto:fmanola@mitre.org       voice: 781-271-8147   FAX: 781-271-875

Received on Monday, 15 April 2002 21:17:37 UTC