Re: W3C RIF BLD Last Call (10 days left in comment period)

[ Folks, please try to pick *one* mailing list for a reply, if you want
to make a public-discussion reply.  I'll reply to Henry on semantic-web,
as the most general list.  Comments which you want to be taken as formal
input to any Working Group need to be sent the comment list named in the
document you're commenting on.  -- Sandro ]

> Just on first reading I find the syntax to be quite problematic. It  
> clashes with other well known syntaxes namely Turtle, SPARQL and N3.
> 
> The two problems I see is that in those languages square brackets are  
> used for blank nodes, and { } to delimit graphs.
> 
> As an example take the following
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-rif-rdf-owl-20080730/#RDF_Compatibility
> 
> [[
> Forall ?x ?y ?z (?x[ex:uncleOf -> ?z] :-
>         And(?x[ex:brotherOf -> ?y] ?y[ex:parentOf -> ?z]))
> ]]
> 
> If I were to write the above in SPARQL I think you meant to say
> 
> [[
> PREFIX ex: <http://example.org/rif>
> 
> CONSTRUCT { ?x ex:uncleOf ?z }
> WHERE {
>       ?x ex:brotherOf ?y .
>       ?y ex:parehtOf ?z .
> }
> ]]
> 
> In N3 similarly
> 
> [[
> { ?x ex:brotherOf ?y .
>    ?y ex:parehtOf ?z . } => { ?x ex:uncleOf ?z . }
> ]]
> 
> SPARQL is already widely deployed, and there are a lot of N3 rules out  
> there, that are very useful guides for people working their way around  
> the web. There is even more Turtle around, and it is a blessing that  
> it is now being used, as RDF/XML though very nice in many ways, leads  
> to a huge amount of confusion.
> 
> My feeling is that the current human readable syntax, not being  
> aligned with SPARQL is going to create confusion unecessarily. It  
> seems to be that an attempt should be made to get something that fits  
> better with SPARQL and N3 intuitions, so as to make the learning curve  
> as light as possible for people who are new to this world.
> 
> 	Henry
> 
> On 9 Sep 2008, at 16:51, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > The W3C specifications for logic rules and for using rules with RDF  
> > and
> > OWL are in their "Last Call" public comment period.  This is the time
> > for people to read them and tell us about anything that doesn't seem
> > right.  After this, if you don't like something in the spec, it will  
> > be
> > increasingly hard to get it changed.  We would like comments by
> > September 19 in order to consider them for our next set of revisions.
> >
> > For more details, see this e-mail I sent August 1st:
> > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2008Aug/0002.html
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> >     -- Sandro

Received on Tuesday, 9 September 2008 16:19:28 UTC