RE: Linkbases, Topic Maps,and RDF Knowledge Bases -- help me understand, please

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

Hi Uche,

Uche said:
You and Eve seem to be taking the most trivial use of RDF and generalizing
it to death.

Of course simple directed arcs can be represented as XLinks, but how do
you conveniently deal with such useful RDF constructs as

Reification
Classes/Schema Constraints
Anonymous resource handling
RDF XML serialization flexibility

And such not-so-useful constructs as

parse-type
about-each and about-each-prefix
RDF XML serialization flexibility ;-)

To give a very short list

Didier replies:
The problem actually is not these features per se. And don't misunderstand
me, I am not preaching reductionism. Simply that merging both concept could
be useful and to keep the other part of RDF as is period.

What can be done
a) instead od using the about="url" to refer to a resource, why not use
href="url" and have xlink to do so.
b) to have let rdf class to be inherited as a link behavior can be
inherited. This would allows a locator to be an RDF class instance as well
as a locator.

if (a) is not resolved then and we allow (b) then we end up with something
like:
<myresource rdf:about="http://www.talvastudio.com"
xlink:href="http://www.talvastudio.com">
.... property list here .....
</myresource>

The problem is that the link and the resource we are providing meta
information is the same. There is probably better to do than that.

If we resolve both issues, the construct could be interpreted with an RDF
interpreter, an xlink interpreter and any custom interpreter created in
XSLT. We gained value period.

Uche said:
Disagree.  I have spent a fair amount of time working over XTM, and I'm
convinced, for purely technical reasons (because I could use Topic Maps
with no political problems) that XTM is problematic for my needs, though I
can see where it is useful.

The key thing is that RDF is at a lower level than XTM, and I think a
merger would be a serious confusion of paradigms.

Didier replies:
I not contradict your needs Uche, and maybe XTM do not fulfill them.
Nonetheless merging both concepts have some virtues. If its a whole or
nothing world, yes I agree with you. On the other hand, if we have some ways
to build things by inheritance then we end up with something simple but
useful. By the way, how the average XML developer is using all the RDF
elements you mentioned? quite a few. this is maybe a time to remember why
XML was created, to get a simpler SGML ;-)

Antagonism or synergy? a simple choice to do...
Cheers
Didier PH Martin.