- From: Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>
- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 23:09:23 -0400
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Cc: <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote: > > > Why is string ordering needed (for the moment)? > > It is not, it is just that the RDB model includes the string ordering, > which is not valid for URIs, and thus the two models do not line up. > The XML Namespaces recommendation directs namespace names (which are URIs - properly 'URI references') to be compared as literal strings. That's one option, the other is to compare canonicalized URIs. Either way URIs can essentially be treated as strings for string comparison purposes. Providing string comparison/ordering does introduce the useful property of defining a collection as set of triples, ordered collections being ordered sets of triples: Canonical order could be defined as alphabetic order by subject, then predicate then object. Collections may be defined as sets bounded by string order e.g. all triples having the subject http://example.org/foo all triples having the subject http://example.org/foo and the predicate http://example.org/memberOf a sequence can be defined by canonical order where the predicate URI order increases over the sequence. -Jonathan
Received on Thursday, 5 April 2001 23:08:47 UTC