- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 16:44:05 -0400 (EDT)
- To: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- cc: Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>, Stefan Kokkelink <skokkeli@mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de>, RDF interest group <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
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