Re: Foaf: a Person is member of a Group

Dan Brickley wrote:
>
> +cc: foaf-dev
>
> On 19/1/09 10:22, Adrian Giurca wrote:
>>
>> I guess you have to use foaf:membershipClass
>> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_membershipClass>
>>
>> <foaf:Person rdf:about="#me" xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
>> <foaf:name>John Doe</foaf:name>
>> <foaf:membershipClass rdf:resource="http://w3c.org"/>
>> </foaf:Person>
>
> Ah, the issue being that in FOAF we define 'member' with domain of 
> Group, range of Agent. Yes, we didn't make inverses for all the 
> properties in FOAF. This can make syntax a little awkward.
>
> With URIs for the person and group:
>
> <foaf:Person rdf:about="#me">
>  <foaf:name>John Doe</foaf:name>
> </foaf:Person>
> <foaf:Group rdf:about="#group1">
>   <member rdf:resource="#me">
> </foaf:Person>
>
I was thinking that the meaning of foaf:Group to be a container for all 
its instances.  In addition I would say is a trade off: in this case 
obtaining all the members of a specific group is a little bit cumbersome
In this case I would advocate for the inverse :)  but I can live also 
with this solution.
> Or using local 'bnode' identifiers only:
>
> <foaf:Person rdf:nodeid="me">
>  <foaf:name>John Doe</foaf:name>
> </foaf:Person>
> <foaf:Group rdf:nodeid="group1">
>   <member rdf:resource="#me">
> </foaf:Person>
>
This is as "John Doe is member in some group".
> Given the nature of RDF/XML syntax, this tradeoff was inevitable.
>
> - if we add more inverses (eg. we already have depicts/depiction) then 
> data that "says the same thing" becomes fragmented
> - if we don't, XML markup looks convoluted
>
> Since there is a trend towards more RDF notations, some of which -like 
> RDFa in XHTML - have more graceful support for inverses, I'm somewhat 
> wary of adding inverse properties at this stage. The cost of not 
> having the extra property is uglier RDF/XML, whereas the cost of 
> having another way of saying the same thing is that either queries 
> need to check for both, or data stores have to normalise (in advance 
> or during query). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postel%27s_law is 
> somehow relevant.
>
> That said, where there is a natural name for a candidate relation and 
> a lot of people ask for it, I don't see a huge problem with putting it 
> into FOAF, though we might start indicating which of two inverses is 
> the 'preferred form' of the relation.
>
> In RDFa XHTML you can write something like:
>
> <div xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">
>    <ul>
>       <!-- Bob, a person with a name and a homepage -->
>       <li typeof="foaf:Person"><a property="foaf:name" 
> rel="foaf:homepage" href="http://example.com/bob/">Bob</a></li>
>
>       <!-- Eve, a person who is in a uri-identified group that has a 
> uri-identified homepage -->
>       <li typeof="foaf:Person">
>         <a property="foaf:name" rel="foaf:homepage" 
> href="http://example.com/eve/">Eve</a>
>            is in the
>             <span rev="foaf:member"> <!-- reversed relation; the group 
> has a member, which is Eve -->
>              <span typeof="foaf:Group" about="/groups/html#it">   <!-- 
> a uri for the group, considered as a thing in itself -->
>                  <a href="/groups/html" rel="foaf:homepage">HTML 
> group</a> <!-- the group's homepage -->
>              </span>
>             </span>
>       </li>
>       <li typeof="foaf:Person"> <!-- this is more cut down, we just 
> say that Manu is in a group whose name is 'RDFa group' -->
>         <a property="foaf:name" rel="foaf:homepage" 
> href="http://example.com/manu/">Manu</a> is in the
>         <span rev="foaf:member"><span typeof="foaf:Group" 
> property="foaf:name">RDFa Group</span></span>
>       </li>
>    </ul>
> </div>
>
> rapper -i rdfa g1.html
> rapper: Parsing URI 
> file:///Users/danbri/working/foaftown/2009/rdfa/tests/g1.html with 
> parser rdfa
> rapper: Serializing with serializer ntriples
> _:bnode0 <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> .
> _:bnode0 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> <http://example.com/bob/> .
> _:bnode0 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "Bob"@en .
> _:bnode1 <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> .
> _:bnode1 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> <http://example.com/eve/> .
> _:bnode1 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "Eve"@en .
> <file:///Users/danbri/working/foaftown/2009/rdfa/tests//groups/html#it> 
> <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Group> .
> <file:///Users/danbri/working/foaftown/2009/rdfa/tests//groups/html#it> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> 
> <file:///Users/danbri/working/foaftown/2009/rdfa/tests//groups/html> .
> <file:///Users/danbri/working/foaftown/2009/rdfa/tests//groups/html#it> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/member> _:bnode1 .
> _:bnode3 <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> .
> _:bnode3 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> 
> <http://example.com/manu/> .
> _:bnode3 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "Manu"@en .
> _:bnode5 <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> 
> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Group> .
> _:bnode5 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name> "RDFa Group"@en .
> _:bnode5 <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/member> _:bnode3 .
> rapper: Parsing returned 15 triples
>
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
Definitely helps (including the necessary RDFa),
Adrian
>
>>
>> -Adrian
>>
>>
>> freskessa wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> I am new in RDF, I'm wroting an application that generates FOAF files
>>> about
>>> the web site users. I don't know how to wrote that the user (person) is
>>> member of a group or organization into the "foaf:Person" tags.
>>> Can you help me please? :(
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Monday, 19 January 2009 14:50:13 UTC