rdf:parseType="daml:list" doesn't cut it

The supposed advantage of using RDF syntax for OWL is that it will allow OWL
to take advantage of RDF software. Unfortunately the seemingly innocuous
addition of an rdf:parseType negates the benefits of using RDF.

A trivial example:

<rdf:RDF>
    <rdf:Description rdf:about="this">
        <ex:ontology rdf:parseType="Literal">
                <expr>
                        <forall var="x y z">
                         <or>
                            <x/>
                            <y/>
                         </or>
                        <implies/>
                           <z/>
                        </forall>
                </expr>
                ...
        </ex:ontology>
    </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

the point being that one can create a perfectly 'legal' RDF document, which
through the use of rdf:parseType="Literal" embeds _some other  language_.

What is the point of that?

i.e since you need a specialized application in order to understand the
embedded language, what is the benefit of encapsulating it in RDF? If only
to help us along the way to writing parsers, query languages etc, the RDF
parsers and query languages won't help, because the the parsers won't
understand the embedded language and the query language won't be able to
inference -- we would be better off hacking together an XML based parser (a
rather easy task when the language is properly designed) and using XQuery
with an add on library.

Jonathan

Received on Monday, 4 March 2002 22:50:05 UTC