- From: Peter Crowther <peter.crowther@networkinference.com>
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 21:59:04 +0100
- To: "'Seth Russell'" <seth@robustai.net>, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> From: Seth Russell [mailto:seth@robustai.net] > From: "Pat Hayes" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu> > > > >> No way to indicate scope or variable bindings, chiefly. > > > > > >Well actually there is if you will allow that a scope of a > variable can > be > > >specified by a set of statements and that statements > themselves have > > >identity. > > > > OK, no way to indicate a set of statements. Same thing. > > Well actually there are two ways to do that. > > 1) Point out the extension of the set with labeled directed > arcs by giving > each statement an identifier: > quad is (stid, subject, predicate, object) > http://robustai.net/mentography/contexts.gif > > 2) Include the name of the set in the label of the arc: > quad is (subject, context+predicate, object) > http://robustai.net/mentography/reificationContext.gif Unfortunately, neither of these are RDF; one extends RDF whilst the other applies a specific interpretation to something within RDF as it exists now. That's fine if we do any of: 1) Extend RDF to include one of these mechanisms (thereby changing the meaning of 'RDF' in a way that may or may not be backwardly compatible with RDF 1.0); 2) Throw away RDF and make something else, maybe even called RDF (thereby changing the meaning of 'RDF' in a way that is probably incompatible with RDF 1.0); 3) Declare that RDF will never be used and that everyone should standardise on a higher layer that provides such an extension (thereby removing RDF from any real use other than as an encoding that can be done more effectively in other ways). It's not so fine if the following happens: 4) Some people use vanilla RDF, some people use an extension, and the two argue about what constitutes 'RDF' and whether a 'RDF parser' can extract anything useful from the other group's data (thereby muddying what constitutes 'RDF'). [Caution: rant ahead] I think we are in danger of (4) happening. That's not a good idea in a standards forum. Unfortunately, it appears that the RDF-Core charter is not broad enough for them to be able to consider (1) or (2); worse, it seems that a number of large players are attempting to rush through RDF standardisation so that each can use it to create incoherent and incompatible graphs that none of the others can read, in the name of standards. This means that (3) may not happen and those players are trying to limit the possibilities of (1) and (2) as well. I haven't seen anything like it since HTML 3.2 --- but then I've kept my nose out of the rest of the standards groups. Maybe standards rally are like sausages --- if you think you like 'em, don't watch 'em being made. [Rant ends] - Peter
Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 16:59:45 UTC