Re: rdfs:Datatype question

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ext Brian McBride" <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
To: "Patrick Stickler" <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>; <w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org>; "ext pat hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
Sent: 02 November, 2002 13:41
Subject: Re: rdfs:Datatype question


> At 13:08 02/11/2002 +0200, Patrick Stickler wrote:
> 
> >IMO, we need rdfs:Datatype to define the set of classes which
> >have the required characteristics for RDF datatyping, namely
> >a lexical space, a value space, and an N:1 mapping from the
> >lexical value space where N > 0.
> >
> >The term rdfs:Datatype is a means to give a name to the set
> >of RDF Classes which exhibit those characteristics.
> 
> That is a good point, which I translate as: the model theory may say 
> nothing about the meaning of rdfs:Datatype, but would it be useful to 
> applications, e.g.  for example, knowing that something is a datatype could 
> trigger an app to go to its datatype implementation registry and look for 
> an implementation.  I'm not entirely convinced by that example.  Maybe 
> Patrick has one.

Sure. The app would go to e.g. the datatyping API at
http://www-nrc.nokia.com/sw/datatypes.zip with the datatype
URI and lexical form to test validity, or compare with
some other value, or to intern the value natively, etc.

Knowing that a URI denotes a member of rdfs:Datatype is 
very important for practical organization of such functionality
as Brian points out above.

> Intuitively, it would seem a bit strange to have a concept like the class 
> of datatypes and not have a name for it.

Agreed.

Patrick

Received on Monday, 4 November 2002 02:38:09 UTC