- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 06:54:06 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Didier VILLEVALOIS <dvillevalois@techmetrix.net>
- cc: Jeff Heflin <heflin@cse.lehigh.edu>, Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>, <drager@bbn.com>, <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Didier VILLEVALOIS wrote: > Hello, > > Shouldn't RDF support something like daml:imports in its core ?? > daml:imports would be a subPropertyOf 'rdf:imports'. > As rdf enables to speak about the same things in different places, it needs > a such mechanism. One problem with pushing this down into RDF's core is that the meaning isn't clear, and (worse) that the clarification of the meaning isn't something we can easily do with any of the formalisms currently being used for RDF, DAML+OIL, WebOnt. One reading might be akin to the XML Inclusions mechanism. Very low level. See http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-xinclude-20020221/ [[ Abstract This document specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML information sets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI references). ]] I don't find much use for XML-level inclusion mechanisms in RDF content, I guess because the imperative sense of "hey, you must go grab that XML and include it here" seems at odds with the largely passive, descriptive, propositional nature of RDF/DAML+OIL content. Another version at a different level of abstraction would be that the current document "in-some-sense-buys-into" the worldview, claims etc (including associated axioms etc) of the referenced document. This is hard to get right. I don't see any particular reason why such mechanisms need to be defined solely for ontologies/schemas, either. This is an interesting problem though. But until we see a clear definition of 'imports' that tells me what I'm doing when I say my doc imports another, I'm not interested in deploying that property in my data. Too risky! I'd also want to be able to import a frozen representation of a namespace or ontology (eg. with sha1/md5 or XML signature). All the while 'imports' isn't in the core of RDF, people can reasonably claim they didn't know what it means, that it is just some utility vocabulary. If we put it in the main specs, we'd need to be a lot clearer on what conclusions 'imports' allows us to draw about a document and its author/publisher. Dan -- mailto:danbri@w3.org http://www.w3.org/People/DanBri/
Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2002 07:51:52 UTC