Re: thinking about the formal model for RDF

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, William Loughborough wrote:

> At 03:14 PM 7/18/01 -0400, Dan Brickley wrote:
> >It shows how RDF lets you mention a whole lot of resources
>
> I guess the problem I (perhaps others?) are having is that "RDF lets you"
> is dependent on how it's decided that "RDF" *lets* you do that? Or
> anything. Where is it specifically granted the *right* to do that?

"lets you" may be my quirky turn of phrases; I meant in the sense of
"facilitates" rather than "permits". It facilitates various
information-sharing practices to the extent that readers of the specs (and
errata, and mailing list) manage to create content and tools for sharing
information expressed using the RDF information model.

> You could string together "mashed potatoes and string beans" but I wouldn't
> have to eat them. How did the example string:
> <Company>
>          <owns>
>                  <Company>
>                          <owns>
>                                  <Company>
> get past (passed by?) something (parser, validator?) that has rules about
> what it doesn't choke on?

That example was incomplete. Here it is fleshed out as a full RDF/XML
document. The rules that define the format of an RDF/XML document are in
the Model and Syntax spec; they're partly in prose, partly in
pseudo-machine format. Recent work (eg. using XML Schema, RELAX-NG and
Schematron) has shown the potential for a more machine-readable
specification of our XML syntax. I've put a copy of this example in the
Web at http://www.w3.org/2001/07/striped-eg1.rdf too, so folk can feed it
to RDFViz or SiRPAC (http://www.w3.org/RDF/Implementations/SiRPAC/) to see
how it parsers into triples. My example was odd in that it consisted
solely of a nest of elements with no URIs or attributes, but it should
parse as sensible RDF.  "A company owns a company that owns a company that
employs a person that has a sister that has shares in a company...".

<rdf:RDF 	xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
		xmlns="http://example.com/striped-eg1#">
<Company>
  <owns>
    <Company>
      <owns>
        <Company>
          <employee>
            <Person>
              <hasSister>
                <Person>
                  <shareOwner>
                    <Company/>
                  </shareOwner>
                </Person>
              </hasSister>
            </Person>
          </employee>
        </Company>
      </owns>
    </Company>
  </owns>
</Company>
</rdf:RDF>


--danbri

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2001 16:44:08 UTC