- From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 11:27:53 -0500
- To: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
Peter Crowther writes: > From: Dan Connolly [mailto:connolly@w3.org] > > Triples are an idiom that show up all over the place, > > in my experience. They look like a pretty important > > and useful modelling primitive. > > You can model a directed graph using a set of triples; you can model an > arbitrarily complex data structure with a directed graph. As primitives, > they are sufficient to model any other structure. I'm not aware of a > simpler primitive that allows you to model an arbitrarily complex data > structure using only a single set containing instances of that primitive. One nit, in the name of clarity here: you only need pairs for directed graphs (DGs). Triples give us directed labeled graphs (DLGs). I think you can represent a DLG with a DG, so maybe it doesn't matter. But it does raise the question: we're using n-tuples to represent information. Is there any clear reason to use n=3 as our fundamental structuring? I think it's more conventient than n=2 and makes self-reference easier than n=anything (which most logics seem to use). But is there a solid theory behind that? -- sandro
Received on Saturday, 3 February 2001 11:28:00 UTC