Re: Grist for layering discussion

Hi there,

Jim Hendler forwared your discussion about why DAML can't be layered atop
RDF. I found it very interesting (and I think I even understood it!) but I
had one comment to make. I agreed with what you wrote entirely...

You wrote:

> Just so you don't think Im just a naysayer: I don't think it will be
> hard to jury-rig a quick fix that will enable work to go ahead. For
> example, if we can introduce a simple distinction into RDF between
> triples that assert and triples that encode then that will avoid the
> immediate problem.  Ive put a hook into the MT to do this. It's ugly
> but it works. But if we just ignore this issue, then it is going to
> rise up and bite us very soon, so we do need to do something.

...however, it was my understanding that this was the purpose of
reification. TimBL writes:

[[[
The RDF model currently is that of an (unordered) set of assertions. We will
demonstrate that this remains all that is needed to represent the new
langauge features. Every new feature can be introduced as a new RDF
property. However, we will see that this is an impractical way of actually
processing information, as it involves using RDF indirectly to describe the
parts of a statement instead of making it directly. This process (called
reification) is described in the RDF Model & Syntax document.
]]]
 - http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Toolbox

Does this solve both the reification and the layering problem?

(I hope you don't mind that I've cc-ed www-archive on this.)

Thanks for your help,
-- 
      "Aaron Swartz"      |               Swhack Weblog
 <mailto:me@aaronsw.com>  |   <http://blogspace.com/swhack/weblog/>
<http://www.aaronsw.com/> |      something different every day

Received on Tuesday, 8 January 2002 21:21:17 UTC