RE: Literals (Re: model theory for RDF/S)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Graystreak [mailto:wex@media.mit.edu]
> Sent: 05 October, 2001 00:36
> To: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Literals (Re: model theory for RDF/S)
> 
> 
> PFPS asserted:
> > If you can understand a specification like Corba or JTAPI 
> or even the
> > meaning of a programming language, like C++ or ML, then you 
> should be
> > able to work your way through a model theoretic 
> specification.  After
> > all, RDF and DAML+OIL are a lot more simple than Corba or C++!
> 
> Speaking as a true naif here, no.  They're not.  I'm not at 
> all sure what
> it means to "understand the meaning of a programming language."  To my
> knowledge, programming languages don't have meanings.  They're just
> syntactic sugars, in which programs are written.  Sometimes very smart
> people can figure out some formal semantics of some of those programs,
> provided the programs aren't even a little bit complex.
> 
> So when someone like me sets out to read and comprehend Patrick Hayes'
> "RDF Model Theory" document, it's bloody slow going.  (Thanks 
> to Patrick
> for doing that work, btw.)
>
> When those of us who are used to sitting down and building 
> things try to
> wrap our brains around this RDF stuff it gets tricky.  It has 
> these two
> weird properties in that it's all wrapped up in FOPL which we learned
> back in undergrad days was a formal system not connected to the real
> world.  And it's supposedly the way real knowledge is to be 
> represented,
> such as business information, rules of operation, and so forth.
>
> I still haven't figured out how to synthesize the two notions; I don't
> think I'm atypically stupid.   
 
I'm glad someone else said it. I didn't want to feel *too* stupid all by
myself...  (even if it's justified in my case ;-)

Even though the MT is important, that's not what the "common folk"
really need to apply RDF. What is *also* needed, as has been mentioned 
in this thread already, is one or more standardized APIs based on
that MT which insulate the common folk from the really complex stuff, so 
that things can "just get done" ;-)

(yeah, I know, that sounds oversimplified and naiive, but you
get the general point, no?)

> ... I could go on, here, but I think Peter
> himself pointed at the problem about a week ago, in a note to
> rdf-interest:
> 	"I'm not happy at all with the fact that RDF has a 51 paragraph
> 	document just to define what a literal is."
> 
> Amen, brother.

And, hey, if we just use URIs to encode typed data values, we
can get rid of literals entirely ;-)

(what's the emoticon for ducking to avoid heavy flying objects?)

;-) ;-) ;-)

Cheers,

Patrick

--
Patrick Stickler                      Phone:  +358 3 356 0209
Senior Research Scientist             Mobile: +358 50 483 9453
Nokia Research Center                 Fax:    +358 7180 35409
Visiokatu 1, 33720 Tampere, Finland   Email:  patrick.stickler@nokia.com

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 17:55:39 UTC