Re: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them

From: "Eli Israel" <Eli@SemanticWorld.Org>
Subject: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 13:08:04 +0300

> A question about URIs:
> 
> The URI for a class does not have to point to a particular resource on the
> web, it just has to be unique.  An ontology describing that entity may be
> located somewhere else entirely.
> 
> If an ontology refers to this class by its URI, how is additional, or even
> primary, information about that class supposed to be found?

Well, just about anywhere, at least in the general case.  For example,
suppose that the class is rdfs:Class.  Information about rdfs:Class can be
found in just about any RDF document.

Of course, there are very many cases where a lot of information about a
class (or any other property) should be found (maybe not now, but when the
Semantic Web actually gets going) by dereferencing a URI related to the URI
references of the class.  Of course, this would only be one organization's
information about the class, and other agents might reasonably have
different views.

> Any help is appreciated.
> 
> Eli Israel, Director
> www.SemanticWorld.Org

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research
Lucent Technologies

Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2003 09:01:47 UTC