xml-dev - RE: RDF? TM? (was Re: Didier's lab report)

[Didier PH Martin <martind@netfolder.com>]

Hello Uche

Uche said:
Your statement makes me wonder how you understand the role of "triples" in
RDF.  I get  the impression that you might not realize that they are
simply a database and list-processing convenient representation of the
RDF abstract model, which is a graph, just like TM's.

You can work with RDF just fine without worrying about constructing
"triples" if you like.  You can use the graph or the XML serialization.

Didier replies:
You now Uche what could be very useful? it is to have the possibility to
inherit the capabilities of an rdf: description. For instance, just imagine
for a moment that you want to encode a list of resources pertinent to a
topic, get this topic to be potentially used as a link and as a RDF
description. Said differently used as a link and as a frame. In that case, I
may get an element to inherit from both the xlink and the RDF capabilities
some thing like:

<netfolder xlink:type="extended" xlink:title="my title"
rdf:type="a_file_system_folder">
<resource xlink:type="locator" rdf:type="a_resource"
xlink:title="mydoc.xml">
	<author>Uche Ogbuji</author>
	<modified> dec 14 2000, 11:01AM</modified>
	<MIME-type>text/xml<MIME-type>
		... other properties .....
</resource>
<resource xlink:type="locator" rdf:type="a_resource"
xlink:title="Anotherdoc.xml">
	<author>Didier PH Martin</author>
	<modified> dec 14 2000, 10:01AM</modified>
	<MIME-type>text/xml<MIME-type>
		... other properties .....
</resource>
</netfolder>

What we would have now would be something that could potentially be
processed by an xlink processor and something which can potentially be
processed by an RDF processor. Note that the link now becomes a smart link
containing meta data about the resource referred by it. In the Antique
Greece I would have gone to the temple and ask the gods to get some good
sense and help us poor xml developers to bring us some good and useful
stuff. In the modern times I have to ask the same thing to the modern
gods... the W3C consortium :-)) And you know what is even funnier? my
outlook spell checker want to change the word W3C by WACO :-)))

Seriously, it would help tremendously if the rdf capabilities could be
inherited like the linking capabilities are. This would turn links into
smart links. So in the example above, an rdf interpreter would know that a
<resource> element is an rdf description - would know that it is about the
resource identified by xlink:href. This implies that an RDF processor has to
be aware that any href with or without a namespace prefix is a reference to
a resource (href seems to be a de facto way to refer to a resource in
several SGML or XML based languages). Then finally, an RDF processor would
know that the children are to be properties. Obviously the rule would be
that only properties could be set as child of a description. Otherwise, we
would have to use namespaces to differentiate the properties and the
non-properties. This could work but wouldn't improve the document's
readability.

cheers
Didier PH Martin
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