Re: "Including" other RDF and RDFS files

Brian McBride wrote:

> At 20:26 09/09/2002 -0700, Graham Wideman wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Is there, for example, some convention whereby a block of RDF can say 
>> "This block of RDF abides by the RDFS schema to be found here", in 
>> the same fashion that an ordinary XML file can specify a DTD by which 
>> it abides?
>
> Graham,
>
> Have a look at isDefinedBy and seeAlso and see if they meet your needs.

"isDefinedBy" is too praticular, the rdfs definition of it is "Indicates 
a resource containing and defining the subject resource."  - note this 
means that the designated resource must define the thing.  In practice 
this has been used to relate a resource to the schema in which it is 
defined.    "seeAlso"  is too general, the rdfs definition of it 
is "Indicates a resource that provides information about the subject 
resource."  - note it is what  we want but is not necessarily a block of 
RDF.  In practice this has been used  to designate *both* web pages that 
just talks about something in natural language and blocks of RDF.  A 
good example of this multiple usage (hense the ambiguity of seeAlso) is 
Dan Brickley's scutter file [1].  

What we need is "rdfs:semref"  which would be a rdfs:subPropertyOf 
rdfs:seeAlso and be defined something like "Indicates a resource that 
provides information related to the subject resource and is of format 
RDF/XML ."   This would be a very useful tool to point to blocks of 
RDF/XML for whatever purpose.   I think it  would almost be as useful 
as  <a href> was to point out other blocks of HTML .... and remember how 
useful that was to the WWW.

Thanks Grahm for bring this up ... I was beginning to think I was the 
only one who missed it.

[1] 
 <http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2001/08/codepict/scutterplan.rdf> 
<http://localhost:2187/node.html?at=%3Chttp://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2001/08/codepict/scutterplan.rdf%3E>

Seth Russell
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113759/

Received on Saturday, 28 September 2002 13:06:12 UTC