parseType collection

OWL is heavily using the new RDF collection syntax.  Thanks for adding it.

However, there are a few places where it would be useful to have
collections, but where the collection syntax is not allowed.

The first case has to do with literals in collections.  I believe that it
is not possible to have literals in the collection syntax, so that

      <owl:Class>
	<owl:oneOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
          1
	  2
	  3
	</owl:oneOf>
      </owl:Class>

is not legal RDF/XML.  (Typed literals are also not possible.)

The second case has to do with making a collection directly an instance of
a class.  For example, it would be useful to do something like

	<owl:AllDistinct rdf:parseType="Collection">
	  <owl:Thing rdf:about="#John" />
	  <owl:Thing rdf:about="#Mary" />
	  <owl:Thing rdf:about="#Susan" />
	  <owl:Thing rdf:about="#Joe" />
	</owl:AllDistinct>

This is not an official request to do anything, but these issues should not
be forgotten if there is any future work on RDF.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research

Received on Friday, 10 January 2003 11:20:09 UTC