RE: API for RDF: locutor

Hi,

this point was already discussed on the list.
Have a look http://www-db.Stanford.EDU/~stefan/updates.html
The first section:  "Tracing RDF statements" provides a summary of the
mailings and links to them (but contrarily to the consensus found on the list
i'am still convinced "locutors" are fundamental and should go into the 
RDF-datamodel,
and thus into the API.)

Ciao,
         Stefan






At 11:47 AM 3/7/00 -0800, you wrote:
>A very interesting point. I think you have identified another in a whole
>universe of issues RDF doesn't explicitly address, which has to do with
>querying and manipulation of RDF objects. RDF does provide the
>infrastructure to support statements about statements, so there is no
>problem creating an RDF object that identifies the locutor of the statements
>in question. But there must be some system/API/protocol in place to enforce
>the presence and accessibility of such meta-statements.
>
>Jeff
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jean-Marc Vanel [mailto:jmvanel@free.fr]
>Sent: Monday, March 06, 2000 11:43 PM
>To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org; Jean Marc VANEL
>Subject: 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/ <http://wwbota.free.fr/> " >site</a>
>   </project>
>   <a href=" http://jmvanel.free.fr/ <http://jmvanel.free.fr/> >home page</a>
>
>   <a href=" mailto:jmvanel@free.fr <mailto:jmvanel@free.fr> ">mail
>(eventually put "wwbota" in subject to route your mail in relevant
>folder)</a>
></person>
>

Received on Tuesday, 7 March 2000 16:47:53 UTC