Datatypes, datatype classes, URIs and uniqueness

• From: Patrick Stickler <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
• Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 14:13:57 +0200
• To: "w3c-rdfcore-wg" <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>
• Message-ID: <016801c29f7c$73016eb0$db9316ac@NOE.Nokia.com>

The MT states:

"The final condition indicates that RDF uses a datatype uriref in two ways: as a name for the datatype itself, and (when used as a
class name) to indicate the class containing the elements of the value space of the datatype."

This sounds like datatype URIs are ambiguous, that they denote two different
things.

I think that it would be better to say that datatype URIs denote
the datatype class, the instance of rdfs:Datatype, and that the class
extension is the value space of the datatype. I.e. the URI denotes just
one thing, the class, and that class happens to have associated with it
the semantics which capture the lexical space and L2V mapping.

Saying the datatype URI means two things, a datatype and the value space
of the datatype as a class (set) seems to violate the fundamental
uniqueness principle of URIs.

Or am I just confused...

Patrick

[Patrick Stickler, Nokia/Finland, (+358 40) 801 9690, patrick.stickler@nokia.com]

Received on Monday, 9 December 2002 07:14:02 UTC