Re: Issue 2.2 - Adding properties to someone else's instances

Jim Hendler wrote:
> 
>   Issue 2.2 - Adding properties to someone else's instances
> 
> status - OPEN,
> 
>   Proposal - CLOSE THIS ISSUE
> 
> Our Working group has decided to use RDF/XML as our exchange
> framework and that the semantics of our documents will be carried by
> the triple store corresponding to this document.  The basic RDF model
> [1] allows documents to refer to and extend the graphs represented by
> other documents, and thus properties can be added to instances
> expressed in other documents.

I'm not so sure about that last sentence. I see no evidence that the RDF
model allows documents to "refer to and extend the GRAPHS represented by
other documents" You can certainly refer to resources using URIs, but it
is not clear from the RDF specs if referring to a URI means you also
refer to the entire graph in which that resource is initially defined. I
just think we need to be careful with the wording here. Perhaps a change
to "The basic RDF model [1] allows documents to refer to and extend the
resources defined in other documents..." would be more appropriate.

There is also a semantic issue with the word "Adding" here. In RDF, when
you refer to a resource, does your graph automatically include all other
properties originally defined for that resource? As far as I can tell,
RDF does not take a position on this issue. If the answer is no, then I
would suggest that you aren't really adding, but instead providing a
different set of properties (I realize this is getting picky, but I
think its important to be absolutely clear about what we mean). 

Jeff

> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/ allo
> --
> Professor James Hendler                           hendler@cs.umd.edu
> Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies     301-405-2696
> Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.    301-405-6707 (Fax)
> Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742          240-731-3822 (Cell)
> http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2002 09:42:58 UTC