RDF Concepts Reference

I have been working on an RDF/XML parser for Redland, the RDF system
that I created, and while doing that I created some reference notes
that other people dealing with the syntax might find useful.

I needed to know what were all the "rdf:" and "rdfs:" things that a
parser could expect to find in the syntax, as defined in RDF and
RDFS, and what to do with them.  I collected this information and
have now made it available as a document:

  RDF Concepts Reference
  http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/notes/concepts.html

I also loaded the rdfs data (read only) into the Redland RDF demo
to help check this stuff.  It is quite easy to do, just select the
links from
   http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/demo?db=rdfs;command=print


This work showed me some things I found interesting -

   Container concepts match two grammar productions (we already knew this)

   Container concepts have a rdf:type but that was only defined in
   RDF Schema as rdfs:Class.  RDF M&S just said: "resource and not property"

   rdf:li is just syntax, and has no defined meaning as an attribute

   rdf:value is not defined in the formal grammar or formal model

   RDFS schema contains extra not-needed rdf:type statements [please
   ignore statement/statings issue here]

   rdfs:ConstraintProperty is the only class that is a subclass of
   two other classes.  Why?

   many concepts have no defined meaning as attributes in the syntax

Dave

Received on Tuesday, 12 December 2000 12:22:45 UTC