Re: Enumerations

Making enumerants be members of a class seems like the perfect application of existing RDFS constructs, and
I don't see the syntax

   <s:maritalstatus rdf:resource="Single"/>

any more burdensome than

   <s:maritalstatus>Single</s:maritalstatus>

   -- Mark


Tom Van Eetvelde wrote:

> Hello RDF comunity,
>
> I did some more thinking as I was not pleased with my own proposal to implement an enumeration of days.
>
> The core problem, I think, is the fact that the 'range' property only accepts classes. When validating
> (or maybe better: typechecking), only instances of those classes may appear. This means that literals
> can never be used as the instance must be typed, which means that it is a resource (with a 'type'
> property)! This questions the use of literals in the RDF schema model. Literals can only be used for the
> moment with properties that are not restricted in range. This makes the example 1 of the RDF M&S a bit
> akward: what you would like to use is the following:
>
> <s:Person rdf:ID="Mike">
>     <s:maritalstatus> Single </s:maritalstatus>
> </s:Person>
>
> and not (the way we have to formulate it now):
>
> <s:Person rdf:ID="Mike">
>     <s:maritalstatus rdf:resource="Single"/>
> </s:Person>
>
> I currently believe that the most elegant way to introduce enumerations is to define a new
> constraintproperty instance: 'literalRange'. This constraintproperty can only have 'bag' instances as
> value.
>
> Continuing the 'days' example then: make a bag with all the days that you need. Make your property that
> you want to see restricted to days and add to this property the literalRange = days bag. When making an
> RDF instance using the defined property, the type checker can search for the filled-in value in the bag.
> If it is in, validation = ok, else nok.
>
> Conclusion: the current defined 'RDF keywords' do not suffice to capture all kinds of behaviour that the
> user wants. The current framework doesn't really support the use of literals when it comes to type
> checking.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Tom.

--
Mark Grossman
Geocast Network Systems       Tel: (650)566-3259
190 Independence Dr.          Fax: (650)566-8112
Menlo Park, CA 94025          E-Mail: msg@geocast.com