Re: Generated RDF conformant with good practise?

Howard Katz wrote:
> 
>>ah, I misunderstood what a bib was, sorry, serves me right for rushing
>>it. It might clarify things to have typed Bib and Book objects perhaps.
> 
> 
> OK, I didn't make that clear. Sorry. Given that understanding then, I'd like
> to re-ask my question to see if your answer still holds. Assuming we want
> our RDF to represent a bibliography containing pointers to various books, do
> you still feel the following is a reasonable way of modelling that
> relationship (ignoring the question of typed vs untyped nodes)?
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <rdf:RDF xmlns:bibterm="http://www.book-stuff.com/terms/"
>          xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.0/"
>          xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
>     <bibterm:Bib>
>          <bibterm:book rdf:parseType="Resource">
>                  <bibterm:year>1994</bibterm:year>
>                  <dc:title>TCP/IP Illustrated</dc:title>
>          </bibterm:book>
>          <bibterm:book rdf:parseType="Resource">
>                  <bibterm:year>1992</bibterm:year>
>                  <dc:title>Advanced Programming in the Unix
> environment</dc:title>
>          </bibterm:book>
>      </bibterm:Bib>
> </rdf:RDF>

It looks good.  Let me translate this into words, and you tell us if it 
captures what you intend.

"There is a thing of type "bibterm:Bib", which bears a "bibterm:book" 
relationship with something that has a "bibterm:year" property of "1994" 
and a "dc:title" property having the value "TCP/IP"; ..."

If that's what you meant, your rdf looks like the way I would prefer to 
write it myself.

Now you haven't said what type of anonymous thing has the bibterm:year 
and dc:title properties, but maybe you don't care.  Or maybe you have a 
few OWL statements that say the those two properties have a domain of 
"bibterm:Book".  Then an OWL-aware reasoner might be able to infer that 
those anonymous things are actually Books.  Or maybe not, if some other 
property could also have those properties for its domain.

Notice that by the judicious use of rdf:parseType (and maybe adding a 
default namespace), you can sometimes convert  "ordinary" xml to legal 
and appropriate rdf... it may take little or nothing more.  Say what you 
will about rdf/xml syntax, I think this ability is a big plus for it.

Cheers,

Tom P

-- 
Thomas B. Passin
Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web (Manning Books)
http://www.manning.com/catalog/view.php?book=passin

Received on Friday, 17 September 2004 01:38:44 UTC