Re: Input sought on datatyping tradeoff

From: Brian McBride <bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Input sought on datatyping tradeoff
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 19:46:49 +0100

[...]

> We are proposing two principal idioms for representing datatyped 
> information.  The first looks like this:
> 
>    <Jenny> <age>          _:a .
>    _:a     <xsdr:decimal> "10" .
> 
> This can be written in RDF/XML like this.
> 
>    <rdf:Description rdf:about="Jenny">
>      <foo:age xsdr:decimal="10"/>
>    </rdf:Description>
> 
> Here the b-node _:a denotes the integer 10 which can be represented in 
> decimal form as the string "10".

Is it possible to have the first triple without the second?  It appears to
not be possible in RDF/XML.  (Yes, this does make a difference.)

[...]

> We believe this idiom to be quite straightforward, 

I disagree.  This idiom requires that blank nodes be able to denote data
values, and if the first triple above is not *always* paired with something
like the second triple, then there may be computational consequences for
languages like OWL.

[...]

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research