RDF is fine with one 'thing' having multiple identifiers, it just hands the problem up a level to the application to deal with.
For example, the owl:sameAs predicate is used to express that the subject and object are the same 'thing'. Then the application can infer that if a owl:sameAs b, and a x y, then b x y. Rob On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 13:00 +0100, Mike Taylor wrote: > Alexander Johannesen writes: > > Anyway, I'm suspecting I don't see what the problem seems to be. To > > create "the best identifier" for things seems a bit of a strange > > notion to me, but is this based on that there is only (or rather, > > that you're trying to create) one identifier for any one thing? > > Yes, this is exactly it. RDF things that each concept should have > exactly one identifier; Topic Maps says its fine to have multiple > identifiers. That seems to be 99% of the conceptual difference > between them. > > My position: it seems obvious that one is the CORRECT number of > identifiers for a thing to have. But since we live in a formal > world, the Topics Map approach may be more practical. > > In other words, I might end up _advocating_ Topic Maps, but don't > expect me to _like_ it :-) > > _/|_ ___________________________________________________________________ > /o ) \/ Mike Taylor <m...@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk > )_v__/\ "I think it's too consistently wrong not to be fixable" -- > Phil Baldwin.
