- From: Wolfram Conen <conen@gmx.de>
- Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 17:07:53 +0200
- To: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
Please, allow to point readers of this list that are interested in the RDF model, reification, or containers to a short discussion paper we wrote recently. Any comment is welcome (conen@gmx.de, klapsing@wi-inf.uni-essen.de). Below, you'll find the abstract and two additional remarks. Thank you for your kind consideration, Wolfram and Reinhold TITLE: RDF model revisited, or: How to make the most out of Reifications and Containers AUTHORS: Wolfram Conen and Reinhold Klapsing ABSTRACT: The basic result presented is the following: with two (hopefully) reasonable assumptions about the intentions behind the RDF model, it can be shown that the RDF model and a model allowing for nested triple and lists of resources and triples, can be mapped to one another (in both directions). This allows to establish a close link between the RDF model and "extended" models recently suggested (Slim RDF, XRDF). Furthermore, it can be used to define the notion of essential models that allows to get rid of unneccessary triples in reifications and containers while still capturing the underlying intentions of the original RDF model. This, in turn, may help to clarify some problems related to interpreting the roles of reification and Bag, Alt and Seq in the RDF model. LINK: http://nestroy.wi-inf.uni-essen.de/rdf/RDFmodel_revisited_v10.pdf Two additional remarks: * We do not propose to change the RDF model (I hope that you like to read this, Brian ;) -- instead, we "interpret" the RDF model in a certain "upwards compatible" way, allowing to "identify" reification with nesting and containers with lists. * Reification and containers are treated as instruments that can be used for automatic structural transformations. (I hope that using the word "structure" here is not too far fetched - Graham? Pat?). That means, that the more "sophisticated" uses of the "reification construct" in RDF would have to be defined (precisely/formally) on a semantic/logic level (on the "schema" level, to use RDF speak). The same is true (more or less) for containers (especially for the meaning of a container's type). In this sense, the discussion paper is an approach to "clean" RDF (not RDFS) from hidden and ambigous semantic implications and to interpret it as a way to express nested triples/lists (and that's it).
Received on Thursday, 31 May 2001 11:07:58 UTC