typed literals for RDF

As requested, here is a very short description of a very different
treatment of literals in RDF.


Given a datatyping scheme, DD, consisting of

1/ a set of datatypes, D
2/ an extension function, I, that maps each datatype into its value space
3/ a lexical to value function, LV, that maps each datatype into a mapping
   from its lexical space to its value space

a datatype literal is just a member of the value space for (at least) one of
the datatypes.  In an RDF graph then has the requirement that objects of
sentences are either resources or datatype literals.

Datatypes would also have names, which could be used as ranges, etc.


Datatype literals can be represented in n-triples as pairs consisting of a
datatype and a lexical value in the value space for that datatype.
Datatype literals can be represented in XML/RDF something like

<Person> 
  <age xsi:type="xsd:integer">10</age>
</Person>


Extension of this syntax could be used as well, perhaps allowing typing of
literals via XML schemas.


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 12 July 2002 09:31:13 UTC