Re: WebArch Ambiguity about Objects, PLUS Suggested Major Replacement

> At 12:32 PM 12/30/02 -0500, Sandro Hawke wrote:
> >      Designers should be careful, however, to distinguish between
> >      places where a web address is used to directly identify a web
> >      page and those where it is used in this indirect manner to
> >      identify something described on the web page.  (This is true
> >      regardless of the use of fragment identifiers in web addresses;
> >      they simply involve a portion of a web page.)
> >
> >I wonder how much of this statement the TAG agrees with.....   I
> >wonder how the RDF community would feel about that last paragraph.
> 
> I, for one, have no disagreement with this final paragraph.  But there's 
> something unsaid, which maybe doesn't need to be said in this context.  In 
> RDF, the referent of a URIref with fragment cannot be assumed to be a part 
> of the referent of the same URI without fragment identifier.  Any such 
> relationship, if it exists, needs to be stated separately.
> 
> Suppose we have:
>    someuri:Unicorn
> and
>    someuri:Unicorn#leftHindLeg
> used in some RDF description.  Absent further information, we cannot assume 
> that the second URIref denotes a part of the thing denoted by the first URIref.

I'd certainly agree that the notion of fragment-ness is in the domain
of web architecture and none of RDF's business.  I like the idea of
the RDF model theory treating identifiers as completely opaque.

How do you explain to an web expert but newcomer-to-RDF what it means
to put the string "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type" in
the "Location" or "Address" field of their web browser?

    -- sandro

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:32:45 UTC