Re: A triple is not unique.

Jonathan Borden wrote:
> 1) Just because it is syntactically possible to assign an rdf:Statement an
> ID doesn't mean that it ought be allowable to assign more than one ID to the
> same statement.

That is true.
But unlike Brian McBride, I think the spec is not un ambiguous about Reified statements (though it is precise about Statements).
Now, assigning more than one URI to a statement is not only syntactically possible, it is useful.
Hence it would be great to officialy allow that.

> 2) I strongly caution against trying to wrangle out of this issue using the
> "can a resource have multiple URIs" question which rears its head from time
> to time. Using the RFC 2364 definition of URI it is clear that the resource
> identified by a URI may be abstract and hence *even when 2 URIs resolve to
> the same network entity*, each URI still identifies a distinct abstract
> resource. The distinction between the resource identified by a URI and an
> entity retrieved when a URI is resolved is clearcut.

I still agree with you.
But the quetion you quote maybe hides a deeper one : "does RDF describe only resources, or does it also describe entities".
My guess is that when a resources resolves to a unique entity, it is very tempting to describe the entity rather than the resource -- and I'm pretty sure some RDF users already did.

  Pierre-Antoine

-- 
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the
universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
(Bill Watterson -- Calvin & Hobbes)

Received on Tuesday, 21 November 2000 04:09:38 UTC