RE: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Ian Stuart [mailto:Ian.Stuart@ed.ac.uk]
> Sent: 09 April, 2003 16:32
> To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: Re: URIs : How to find the ontologies behind them
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>:
> 
> > 
> > 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.
> This is very reminiscent of the discussion that happened when 
> talking about 
> namespaces and Schema's:
> 
> "What do I put at the end a namespace URI?" which is answered at:
> http://lucas.ucs.ed.ac.uk/tutorials/namespaces/#rddl

But, as many folks seem to be in denial about, this does not work for
the SW, or at least for RDF, because RDF has no notion of XML namespaces
and one cannot reliably derive a namespace from a URI, and thus one 
cannot reliably obtain any namespace document for a URI.

The whole notion of namespace documents are meaningless to RDF. There
are no namespaces in an RDF graph. Period.

What is needed is a standardized means to obtain knowledge about a resource
based on the *opaque* URI of the resource.

And I'm working on finalizing just such a solution. I'll post to
www-rdf-interest shortly about it.

Patrick

--
Patrick Stickler, Nokia/Finland, (+358 40) 801 9690, patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 10 April 2003 02:17:51 UTC