Re: RDF Datatyping MT *does* define Datatyped Literal Pairings

On 2002-04-19 3:24, "ext Pat Hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu> wrote:

> 
> A snippet which gets to the root:
> 
>> 
>>>  To conclude that Jenny's ex:age is ten would be a mistake, an invalid
>>>  inference. We should make this painfully clear to users, so they do
>>>  not get their RDF in a muddle.
>> 
>> I didn't say Jenny's ex:age was ten. I said Jennys age was ten.
> 
> Fine. But what Jenny's (real) age is, is NOTHING TO DO WITH US. We
> are giving a spec for the RDF. The RDF uses the uriref <ex:age>, so
> the meaning of that is what we are concerned with. And in the
> example, the meaning of that is that IEXT(I(<ex:age>)) contains
> <I(Jenny), "10">, not <I(Jenny), 10>. So that is what we should say
> about it, clearly and unambiguously; so that if someone wants the
> relational extension to contain something else, they can know to
> write their RDF differently.

I'll try this one more time...

The meaning of the literal node in the inline idiom is always
the string. It is crystal clear from the MT that an application
should always consider the value of the ex:age property to be
a string.

However, the presence of an rdfd:datatype assertion for the
ex:age property also communicates to the application that it
is free (nay, *expected*) to interpret the literal as a lexical
form of xsd:integer.

Thus, the semantics of the RDF graph say that the property
value of ex:age is a string. But the semantics of the inline
idiom and the rdfd:datatype assertion together communicate
the datatype value ten. This latter interpretation does not
change or override the semantics of the literal node in
the graph. But it does capture the intent of the content
producer in associating the datatype with the literal, to
say that the literal should be interpreted in terms of the
specified datatype (as there is no other rational reason
to associate a datatype with a literal).

Yes, the datatype value is provided to the application "above"
or "beyond" or "in addition to" the meaning of the explicit
nodes in the graph, but it still provided (or should be
provided) by the RDF Datatyping semantics/interpretation.

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 Friday, 19 April 2002 04:49:49 UTC