Re: Graph naming?

Eric Jain wrote:

>>rdfstore:context properties to flag each description block
>>
> 
> This is an excellent solution, wish I had thought about it earlier!
> 
> The only drawback I see is that this solution can end up being a bit
> verbose, but then again it's completely backard-compatible.
> 
> So, if the official serialization syntax is ever revised, defining an
> rdf:context property would in my opinion to be a better approach than
> anything that requires tools to be rewritten from scratch.
> 

It's a good solution to the current situation - i.e. providing 
compatibility with RDF/XML and providing context info, however it has a 
number of drawbacks that should be considered if aiming at a revision of 
RDF ....

1) The structure of the XML elements becomes significantly more important, 
in that the rdfstore:context attribute has scope over all triples generated 
in the XML element to which it is attached. This is the same scoping as say 
xml:base but cannot be recovered from the triples generated using the 
current RDF/XML rec - thus the backward compatibility is merely at the 
level that current tools don't vomit. It might be better if they did.

2) The context is handled with the open world assumption - i.e. you can 
have any number of rdfstore:context attributes with thesame value, and 
their effect is cumulative. I believe there may be use cases in which this 
is not appropriate.

3) It is not clear what the intended semantics is, in many ways the fact 
that you can translate the RDF/XML into triples which have a (wrong) 
meaning under RDF Semantics, is a handicap.

Jeremy

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 06:11:40 UTC