API for RDF: locutor

David Megginson <david@megginson.com> write on 2000-02-25 :

     Unfortunately, it's not about triples.  The only way to
     discover the
     true RDF data model is to reverse-engineer it from the XML,
     and it
     turns out that there are at least six components (not three)
     in each
     statement:

       subject
       subjectType (global id, local id, URI pattern)
       predicate
       object
       objectType (literal text, literal XML markup, reference)
       objectLang

     These are not simply syntactic artifacts -- it's information
     that
     *must* be exposed through any RDF API ...

There's yet another very important item that is implicit in any RDF set
of descriptions: it's the locutor. I mean by locutor the individual or
organisation who makes these descriptions. But we don't have direct
access to the locutor, except by a possible dc:Creator property. But in
turn a dc:Creator property points to a name, possibly not unique, or to
a mail adress or home page, possibly obsolete. This subject on the
identity, uniqueness, persistence of a resource could take us far
away... The obvious design solution is that the locutor IS the URL (not
URI here!) where our RDF set of descriptions appears in.

So if a Web site S1 says about someone:

<looks>ugly</looks>

And another Web site S2 says about the same person:

<looks>handsome</looks>

My RDF application can decide, with a knowledge of which of locutors  S1
and S2 is trusted most.


--
<person>
  <firstName>Jean-Marc</firstName>
  <lastName>Vanel</LastName>
  <project>Worlwide Botanical Knowledge Base -
      making botany available on Internet
    <a href="http://wwbota.free.fr/" >site</a>
  </project>
  <a href="http://jmvanel.free.fr/>home page</a>
  <a href="mailto:jmvanel@free.fr">mail (eventually put "wwbota" in
subject to route your mail in relevant folder)</a>
</person>