Re: Klyne Contexts: 3. Statements sets in RDF

I basically agree with Jonas' points but want to focus on the RDF/XML
perspective on the issue of statement sets. 

The M&S specifies a mechanism for generating and modeling statement
sets in section 6. It is the use of Bags that contain the reified
statement resources that correspond to the statments that were present
in a particular rdf:Description in the syntax. 

The author of the RDF/XML document can use syntax mechanisms to
explicitly label the Bag (using bagId) and the reified statement
resources (using property ID). Lets call the Bag the rdf:StatmentBag
resource and the reified statement resources, rdf:Statement resources. 

Although it isn't spelled out, I assume that anonymous rdf:Statement
resources and rdf:StatementBag resources will be labeled relative to
the document. The explicitly labeled resources are guaranteed to be
labeled relative to the document since they are labeled using ID
rather than URI. 

What this means is that all the statements in the document are now
unambiguously referenced from rdf:Statement resource that show their
stating as being in the source document. In addition, all the statings
that occured in a specific rdf:Description are referenced from an
rdf:DescriptionBag resource that is also bound to the source document
via its URI. 

You now have a way to track provenance that is already *built in to
the M&S*. You can merge the models generated from multiple documents
and trace back all the statings to the source documents and further to
the particular instances of rdf:Description that generated them. 

On a separate but related front is the issue of how to implement this
efficiently but that shouldn't directly color the discussion of what
it means to map the syntax to the model and how to track statings. 

Gabe

-- 
--------------------------- 
http://www.jfinity.com/gabe

Received on Thursday, 23 November 2000 16:12:04 UTC