Issue name: 024-Various

Model theory, examples, inference

Raised by:
Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Raised on:
2002-10-27
Raised in message:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2002OctDec/0053.html
Target document section reference(s):
http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/RDF-concepts/2002-10-25/rdf-concepts.html#xtocid4809
http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/RDF-concepts/2002-10-25/rdf-concepts.html#xtocid48015
http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/RDF-concepts/2002-10-25/rdf-concepts.html#section-Datatypes
Status:
Closed
Last updated:
2002-11-29
Owner:
Graham Klyne

Details

Model theory is a mathematical term, not something that is only used
and understood by logicians.  As model theory has a consistent meaning
throughout the RDF documents, there is no reason to qualify the term.

It would be much better if the examples in the document made sense.
For example, floats(oil,water) is not a triple that makes sense,
unless you make oil denote some particular bit of oil that is
currently floating on some particular bit of water, which does not
appear to be the intended meaning of these terms in the example.
Similar problems are exhibited by the boiling example.

RDF does provide and, in some sense, requires some inferential
machinery.  In particular RDFS requires that rdfs:subClassOf be
transitive.

History

2002-10-27: Raised

See: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-comments/2002OctDec/0053.html

See: 022-SocialMeaning.html

See: 023-SyntaxEquality.html

No nead to qualify term "Model theory"?

Some examples don't make sense.

RDF does provide some inferential machinery (section 2.2.7?).

2002-10-28: Assigned

GK working through comments.

2002-11-04: Response

Reference to model theory now as used by literature of mathematics and logic. Given early confusion about RDF, I think this qualification should be made for non-mathematician readers.

I don't understand the problem with the examples.

Removed reference to inference machinery.

2002-11-21: Response

See: http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/RDF-concepts/2002-11-21/Overview.html

Removed some problematic examples.

2002-11-29: Closed

See: http://www.ninebynine.org/wip/RDF-concepts/2002-??-??/TBD

We believe these issues have been addressed by changes to the forthcoming working draft.