Re: Input sought on datatyping tradeoff

Hi RDF WG,

In a message dated 7/11/02 11:49:45 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com writes:
> To end then, please send a message to www-rdf-comments@w3.org (by 26 July 
>  2002) indicating whether you believe its more important to have the answer 
>  to test cases A be yes, or test case D be yes:

I believe it is more important to have the answer to test case D be yes.
I would take the precedent from programming languages where literals 
must be precisely defined and either have a default type for the lexical 
representation in the source code file or the literal is augmented to 
specify its type.  For example in Java, we have 
long age = 100234L;
float gpa = 3.4f;

Whereas if I say,
float gpa = 3.4;

That is an error because by default the lexical representation of a decimal
number is considered to be of type double by the compiler.

Like a compiler, I would like an RDF processor to assume as little
as possible.  With a minimalist philosophy, when processing Test
Case A, the only thing an RDF processor can determine is that
their string representations are equal but have no idea if their
values are equal without further datatyping information.
I don't believe this is untidy, just specific.  Most importantly,
this would guarantee that Test A3 is NEVER logically inferred to be 
equal which would be an egregious error.

>     Test A:
>  
>     <Jenny> <ageInYears> "10" .
>     <John>  <ageInYears> "10" .
>  
>  Test D:
>  
>     <Jenny>      <ageInYears> "10" .
>     <ageInYears> <rdfs:range> <xsdr:decimal> .
>  
>     <John>  <ageInYears>      _:a .
>     _:a     <xsdr:decimal>   "10" .
>  
>  We would also like to know the reasons for this preference.

Best wishes,

- Mike
----------------------------------------------------
Michael C. Daconta
Director, Web & Technology Services
www.mcbrad.com

Received on Thursday, 11 July 2002 20:43:10 UTC