RDF's binary nature

Since I first started reading about RDF I assumed its binary
nature implied that you couldn't have a resource with more
than one value for the same property, ie that this wasn't legal:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns="http://www.foo.org/bar#">
  <foo>
    <bar>baz</bar>
    <bar>boo</bar>
  </foo>
</rdf:RDF>

But apparently it is (it validates with the RDF Validation Service
and I've encountered real world examples of the same basic structure)
and when I think about it there's no real basis for such an assumption.

I was hoping someone could verify that this is in fact valid and possibly
explain why this is legal when we have bags.  The fact that there are
no examples of this in any of the RDF specs I've read (that I can remember
at least) could be seen as a little misleading.

I'm trying to come up with a simple RDF API and the API could be much
simpler if this wasn't the case.  I also realize that this structure 
is very common in other XML dialects and disallowing it would create a
barrier to converting them to RDF.

Also if I have:

    <bar>baz</bar>
    <bar>baz</bar>

instead I'm making two distinct but otherwise equivalent statements right?

Thanks in advance...

Received on Thursday, 19 June 2003 12:01:03 UTC