RE: The mentography of reification

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-rdf-logic-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-rdf-logic-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 8:32 PM
> To: Geoff Chappell
> Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> Subject: Re: The mentography of reification
>
>
> >My understanding is that the triple can be thought of as defining a
> >particular arc in a graph. That nodes and arcs have identities
> (locations on
> >a page, position in memory, or whatever) and labels.  That with the
> >restriction that no two nodes can have the same label,
>
> We may want to relax this slightly for literals; but otherwise, yes.
>
> >  we can uniquely
> >identify a node by its label. That with the restriction that duplicate
> >triples can not exist, we can uniquely identify an arc by the nodes it
> >connects (in order) and the label on the arc. (Nodes, I guess,
> are asserted
> >into existence by their use in describing an arc?)
> >
> >Taking that view, I'd always envisioned that a nested or reified triple
> >would be shown on a graph as arcs originating or terminating on
> arcs (though
> >I don't know about the validity of that in graph-speak).
>
> It isn't good graph-speak, and it isn't correct RDF either, so don't
> think of it that way, I would suggest.
>

Thanks for the suggestion :) But I can't help thinking there's something
clarifiying about that way of looking at it. To make it a valid picture I
suppose it requires elevating labeled arcs to nodes themselves with arcs
then just identifying the binary connections between nodes. Couldn't that be
considered an alternative visualization/representation? I realize that
deviates from the normal view but surely it captures the essence of rdf -
its binary predicate-ness and readily allows for (future) deeper structures
(nested triples, lists). It probably requires giving nodes an intrinsic type
but that seems beneficial for other reasons as well.

I realize this falls easily under the "not rdf" category - as everything
that rdf might become does. But surely what gets defined today tries to
anticipate the rdf of tomorrow. How does the current graph conceptualization
of rdf handle deeper structures? is it as seth russell described? with
sub-graphs becoming the subjects and objects of triples?

Geoff Chappell

Received on Thursday, 25 October 2001 07:39:26 UTC