- From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>
- Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 10:50:41 -0600
- To: "Nikita Ogievetsky" <nogievet@cogx.com>
- cc: "Seth Russell" <seth@robustai.net>, www-rdf-interest@w3.org, "Sandro Hawke" <sandro@w3.org>
> Well... let me jump on this... > This is actually exactly what Topic Maps are doing. > > At Extreme 2001 [1] and KT2002 [2] conferences > I presented some steps towards the RDF representation for Topic Maps. > In particular, proposed RDF Topic Maps Schema > has two daml:UnambiguousProperty sub-properties: > rtm:indicatedBy and rtm:constitutedBy > (see slide http://www.cogx.com/kt2002#slide16) > > The object of rtm:indicatedBy property INDICATES the subject. > For example, http://www.cogx.com/kt2002 can be used to indicate the notion > of Quantum Topic Maps (QTM), > QTM is one of Topic Maps representations. > Or in N3: > > :QTM rtm:/indicatedBy http://www.cogx.com/kt2002; :representationOf > :TopicMaps. > > and the object of rtm:constitutedBy property CONSTITUTES the subject > For example you can say that html page at http://www.cogx.com/kt2002 has a > pink background: > > :myPresentation rtm:/constitutedBy http://www.cogx.com/kt2002; > :hasBackground :pink. And let me re-iterate that I disagree with this. Eric Prud'hommeaux said the same thing, so I'm rather frightened a practice of this might be forming. The straw man is that RDF uses http://uche.ogbuji.net to represent the person "Uche Ogbuji". All the discussion about "published subjects", and odd tricks with unambiguousProperty seem to be solutions to this supposed problem. But I don't see why anyone thinks that RDF says http://uche.ogbuji.net *is* the person. I also don't see what is special about a published subject identifier that makes it an acceptable stand-in for the person. If enough people agree that urn:folks:uche.ogbuji.net is an acceptable published subject identifer for "Uche Ogbuji", then they have already done all the work RDF needs to take advantage of this in description of the person. I don't see that Topic Maps gains anything with this built-in indirection, except one of the most complex data models I have ever seen for a description language (puts CIM to shame, I must say). This is *not* a flame on Topic Maps. TM has things that RDF desperately needs, such as scopes and merging, but I don't think that the subject/occurrence (or whatever) distinction is one of the things RDF needs. -- Uche Ogbuji Principal Consultant uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com +1 720 320 2046 Fourthought, Inc. http://Fourthought.com 4735 East Walnut St, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA XML strategy, XML tools (http://4Suite.org), knowledge management Track chair, XML/Web Services One (San Jose, Boston): http://www.xmlconference.com/
Received on Sunday, 7 April 2002 12:51:39 UTC