Re: Datatype question

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Stickler" <patrick.stickler@nokia.com>
To: "ext Geoff Chappell" <geoff@sover.net>; "RDF Interest"
<www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: Datatype question


[.......]
> > I can see the value of the untidy literal approach to datatyping. I do
think
> > though, there is a practical impementation advantage to tidy literals
(which
> > admittedly may not outweight the cost of keeping them).
>
> There is no such practical implementation advantage to tidy literals. You
> can, in your implementation, employ tidy literal nodes in the triples
> store, so long as you preserve the semantic untidyness. There are numerous
> ways to optimize storage of untidy literals. So no worries there.
>

it's not the storage I'm concerned about (because as you say that's easy to
deal with). Saying "There is no such practical implementation advantage to
tidy literals" is equivalent to saying there is no practical implementation
adantage to using anything but bnodes/existential variables to identify
resources - i.e. it disassociates nearly completely identity of the denoted
object with its label and relies upon additional information to establish
identity. It's one thing to say that multiple names may refer to the same
object, it's something else entirely to say that the same name can refer to
multiple objects. The first case we clearly have to deal with since we can't
make a unique names assumption a la prolog and family (and so need sameXXXAs
type predicates). It's the cost of "preserv[ing] the semantic untidyness"
that I.m concerned about because in many implementation it results in
cross-product behavior followed by functional equality testing to winnow the
values. I'm sure it's not insurmountable but I think it's fair to say there
will be a measurable cost.

-geoff


> Regards,
>
> Patrick
>
>
>
> --
>
> Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
> Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
> Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com
>

Received on Monday, 24 June 2002 09:39:03 UTC