Re: any good hacks for these?

> 
> Hi,
> Four different problems that as far as I know don't yet have single standard
> solutions. I'd be very interested in hearing how people are dealing with
> these in practice.
> 
> 1. A context thing. Say we have an RDF file containing a set of assertions,
> and we want to load this into our system. The only thing is, we need to know
> that these assertions came from the same (identified) source. Internally we
> can use a quad type model or whatever, but if we want to merge these
> assertions with another set and pass them on, how can this be done whilst
> maintaining an association between the source and the assertions?

In 4Suite we have scopes, which are a URI that can be associated with any 
statement (i.e. similar to your quads approach).  Mixing and matching isn't a 
problem because the API gives you access to the scope, and you can manipulate 
it as need be.


> 2. Properties-as-instances. How to treat the arc of a statement in the same
> fashion as the nodes. This came up recently, and I think the main suggestion
> was to make new property classes as required. This still strikes me as
> rather clunky for implementation, are there any good workarounds out there?

Blank nodes, as in the n-ary relationship example in RDFMS 1.0.  Yes it's 
clunky.


> 3. Weightings/confidence factors. I'll probably (0.5) be having cocoa
> shortly. Or even, isEquivalentToMaybe[-.1].  Any neat approaches?

Blank nodes.  Clunky.


> 4. Stuff. How does one handle a continuum/mixture of non-atomic stuff? As a
> subclass of owl:Thing?

I'm not clear on this one.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
Track chair, XML/Web Services One Boston: http://www.xmlconference.com/
Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management, Part 7 - 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think12.html
Keeping pace with James Clark - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/libra
ry/x-jclark.html
Python and XML development using 4Suite, Part 3: 4RDF - 
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8A
1EA5A2CF4621C386256BBB006F4CEC

Received on Thursday, 1 August 2002 23:56:24 UTC