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RE: abstract model and reification

From: McBride, Brian <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:13:01 +0100
Message-ID: <5E13A1874524D411A876006008CD059FE7DBB9@0-mail-1.hpl.hp.com>
To: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
Cc: "RDF Interest (E-mail)" <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
I was thinking about whether it might be possible to 'get
creative' in interpreting the spec but it seems pretty 
clear what the original intent was :(

Whatever the current spec says, the idea of anon resources
as variables, and consequently partial reification seems
worth exploring further.

If this interpretation remains attractive as a semantics
for anonymous resources and we are unable to reconcile it 
with the current spec, then I guess we'll just have to 
figure out how to deal with that.

Brian McBride
HPLabs


> > A colleague has pointed this out to me, from m&s:
> > 
> >   When a resource represents a reified statement;
> >   that is, it has an RDF:type property with a 
> >   value of RDF:Statement, then that resource 
> >   must have exactly one RDF:subject property,
> >   one RDF:object property, and one RDF:predicate
> >   property.
> > 
> > Oh well ...
> 
> Hmmm... I'm sat here with Dave Beckett trying to figure out what this
> might mean. Here's a possibly sneaky interpretation: the resource "in
> itself" must have those properties, but an RDF implementation 
> (database,
> serialised graph etc.) might not have representations of those
> properties, even though they (in some sense) exist in the 
> abstract.  So,
> the reading of the spec is that resources that are reifications of
> statements will always have these four properties. But we don't
> necessarily know what the values of those properties are. So 
> we take the
> 'must' language to be an observation about the world, rather 
> than about
> data structures...
> 
> I'm not sure if I'm persuaded (Dave isn't ;-)
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> 
Received on Tuesday, 19 September 2000 11:13:12 UTC

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