RE: Is <Description> redundant?

At 10:44 PM 12/20/00 -0500, Jonathan Borden wrote:
>Graham Klyne wrote:
>
> >
> > I has occurred to me that the "third basic abbreviation" form for RDF in
> > XML, coupled with the RDF schema definition of rdfs:Resource, renders the
> > <rdf:Description> element of RDF redundant.
>
>One remaining question. M&S states that a container is implicitly associated
>with a Description (see between figures 8 and 9). Is this also true for a
>typedNode? If without a bagID?

My take is that a 'typedNode' (with or without 'bagId') *is* a 
'Description', so nothing is changed.  I read that RDF M&S + RDFS allow any 
occurrence of:

    <rdf:Description ...>
     :
    </rdf:Description>

can be replaced by:

    <rdfs:Resource ...>
     :
    </rdfs:Resource>

leaving everything else unchanged.

Hence, I argue, that the 'Description' element is redundant.  Nothing else 
changes.  Alternatively, 'rdf:Description' can be viewed as a synonym for 
'rdfs:Resource'.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
(GK@ACM.ORG)

Received on Monday, 1 January 2001 14:00:48 UTC