Re: Two questions about bagid

(with apologies, a message delayed for a few days, while my laptop was 
repaired)



On Friday, Feb 14, 2003, at 08:27 US/Eastern, Brian McBride wrote:

> I'm following up on this from a process perspective.  In my initial 
> response I forgot to ask whether that response resolved your comment.
>
> We've had some offlist discussion from which I think I've learnt that 
> I might reinterpret your question as:
>
>   Should the syntax that triggers generatation of reified statements, 
> i.e. rdf:bagID and some instances of rdf:ID be removed from the 
> specification.
>
> Would that be a fair characterization?

Yes

> My quick response to this question is that the WG was chartered to 
> clarify M&S.  It wasn't chartered to remove bits of the syntax (though 
> it has done so in other instance where clarification was difficult).
>

That's fair.

> The WG might have been more willing to consider this question if it 
> had been brought up earlier, but we are now in last call so it is more 
> difficult to make such changes.

I must indeed apologize for not bringing this up earlier.  The question 
of the
semantics of these triples only arose practically for me in relation to 
a need for reification
in some very recent and incomplete work on ontologies for expressing
proof.



> As I noted earlier, there are now several implementations of the 
> features you suggest be removed.
>


If reification has been used in existing applications that will I am 
sure
shed light on the semantics of the triples.

A reasonable path then, in keeping with the charter, would seem to be
  to clarify the semantics of the generated triples (inferences which may
be made from them, etc) , and leave in those things which are clear in 
the spec.
One could perhaps look at a future plan for profiles of RDF which 
re-asses
what is included in the very core layer.


> I doubt you will find this response satisfies you, but my question to 
> you is whether you are persuaded to withdraw the comment or whether 
> you would like this comment recorded and considered by the WG.


It really depends on whether the group feels that the semantics can be 
clarified.

You continue in another message,

> This is the process policeman again.
>
> I think the second question you have raised in this thread concerns 
> the semantics of reification.  There has been some discussion and I'd 
> like to clarify whether this discussion has satisfied your concerns or 
> whether we should get a clear statement of the issue to go on the WG's 
> last call comments list.


If reification has been used in existing applications that will I am 
sure
shed light on the semantics of the triples.

A reasonable path then, in keeping with the charter, would seem to be
  to clarify the semantics of the generated triples (inferences which may
be made from them, etc) , and leave in those things which are clear in 
the spec.

I am not personally familiar with the de re interpretation of 
reification so
I can't really judge how it would be used.  I would trust the group 
though
if they felt it was defined.

One could perhaps look at a future plan for profiles of RDF which 
re-asses
what is included in the very core layer.  I think that is important for 
the simplicity
of RDF as a foundation for many things.





> Brian
>
>
>
> At 09:35 12/02/2003 +0000, Brian McBride wrote:
>
>> This response is to "a developer" the signature on the original 
>> posting.
>>
>> At 14:15 11/02/2003 -0800, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>>
>>> I have a question about implementation of the bagid feature.
>>> My parser doesn't currently implement it, and so  fails the RDF
>>> tests which involve it.   The same seems to apply to Ids on
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Is this feature then worth implementing? What does the group think?
>>
>> In an ideal world the answer is "no".  There are several parsers, for 
>> different languages, that pass all the WG testcases.  Have you 
>> considered integrating one of those rather than building your own?
>>
>> If you really need to build your own, the answer in general is yes, 
>> if you want to be sure of interoperating with other implementations.
>>
>> Brian

Received on Monday, 3 March 2003 20:51:53 UTC