Thomas B. Passin wrote:
>
> You could get the same effect by embedding into the rdf document one
triple
> that used the namespace URI as its subject and said what working URL to go
> to for the property definitions. Then no one would have to get confused
> about whether a property URI represented the concept of the bare URL.
>
> Just another convention, but one that seems cleaner to me.
>
For RDF/OWL applications, we can assume that when property URIrefs are
dereferenced it will be with Accept: application/rdf+xml
In that case, there is no confusion at all. RDF/OWL applications will get
back an OWL description of the property. An OWL application understands
exactly that the following URIref:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-owl-guide-20030331/wine.owl#TableWine
which dereferences to:
<owl:Class rdf:ID="TableWine">
<owl:subClassOf>
<owl:Class>
<owl:intersectionOf rdf:parseType="Collection">
<owl:Class rdf:about="#Wine" />
<owl:Restriction>
<owl:onProperty rdf:resource="#hasSugar" />
<owl:hasValue rdf:resource="#Dry" />
</owl:Restriction>
</owl:intersectionOf>
</owl:Class>
</owl:subClassOf>
</owl:Class>
means the class of TableWine. To the RDF/OWL appliction this DOES NOT mean
the XML element owl:Class[@rdf:ID="TableWine"] because the RDF and OWL model
theories define this piece of XML to be interpreted as an OWL class. That is
to say RDF and OWL have a very definite semantics defining an interpretation
of the XML and/or N-Triples syntax on which they might be based.
Jonathan
