Re: RDF Terminologicus

Graham Klyne wrote:
> Thanks for picking up the baton.  I make no claim that my definitions were
> best, or even correct;  I was trying to respond to what I thought were good
> suggestions about locking down some of the terms we use.

Of course, and that was a good job :)
My remarks were intended to get things further...

> I had been thinking some more about this issue, and wonder if it might not
> be a useful goal of the RDF-IG to prepare a NOTE covering "RDF terminology
> and concepts" -- that way any gains from these discussions can be "locked
> in".  Maybe an addition to the Semantic Web Activity proposal currently up
> for consideration?

Definitely agreed.

> > > Stand for:
> > >    A labelled entity that is used in descriptions indicate some entity or
> > >    concept.
> > >
> > I don't get this one.
> 
> I was trying to cover my use of that phrase in the next definition...  I
> was probably being too picky.

I guess we should refer to [RFC 2396] where TBL defines a resource as
"a mapping to an entity or a set of entities".
Web resources' entities are pieces of data, and the same URI can map to
more than one piece of data, depending on the retrieval context.
RDF resources' entities can also be human beings, places, etc...
When a resources maps to an entity,
we will often say that the resource represents/models/stands for the entity.

> >Reified statement:
> >     The resource which stands for a statement in a reification of
> >     that statement.
> >
> I think a problem with the term "reified statement" is that it suggests the
> reification is unique (e.g. the "statement" part _is_ unique, per M&S,
> hence the implication that "reified statement" is unique.).  I would
> suggest something like "reification resource" or "statement resource" for
> the purpose you describe.

You are right. I personaly like "reification resource", then.

> Stating:
>     The expression of an RDF statement [or set of statements]
>     in some context of discourse that is taken to be an assertion
>     of the truth of the statement[s] in that context.

Looks more like the definition I was expecting at the beginning :)
I like this one ; in that definition, Statings are not resources nor statements, but facts of language.
How to represent/model those facts of languages as resources is another story,
which is not told in RDF M&S -- since reification resources *stand for* statements, rather than statings...

> I think that "stating" is the basic mode of RDF:  every RDF statement is a 
> stating.

Darn, this becomes confusing.
You must be meaning that every <piece of RDF which results in a statement> is a stating.
Am I right ?

  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 Thursday, 4 January 2001 08:34:54 UTC