response to issue pfps-09

I believe that there is a missing part of datatypes in the RDF model
theory, and, moreover, that this missing part makes datatypes unusable
in RDF.  The missing part is a mechanism for tieing a URI reference to
a datatype.

----

The MT assumes that datatypes are defined externally to RDF, and that 
part of this defining process involves associating a uriref with each 
datatype which can be used as its 'name', ie the semantic assumption 
is that the denotation is defined externally. I feel that this is 
entirely appropriate for a semantic specification, and that the 
general issue of how meanings can be associated with urirefs is 
beyond the scope of this WG.

A more practical answer to this comment is that the inference rules 
for datatypes each specify a certain kind of information about the 
datatype, and clearly state that the rule can be applied only when 
that kind of information is somehow made available to an inference 
engine. Since the use of urirefs as URLs which provide access to APIs 
is well established on the Web, this seems to provide an clear guide 
to implementers as to how to proceed.

I therefore propose that the WG takes no action on the basis of this 
comment , except possibly to refer the issue to some other authority 
(eg the TAG group?)

Pat
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Received on Tuesday, 4 February 2003 19:26:50 UTC