2005-12-27

The Wheel and the Hub (six months later)

Six months have passed since the first release of 'The Wheel and the Hub'. Thought it was time to revisit it, and make it consistent with a parallel new release of SPEK vocabulary. The new presentation is much shorter and more full of emptiness. Eventually I've came back to the first impression about it, which is well known to often turn out to be the best one. Blank Nodes are indeed the clue for representation of subjects, but with a subtle and important difference with the first version. Blank nodes representing subjects must be really empty, they have to bear absolutely no declaration of any property whatsoever, not even links to their various descriptions (as they did in the previous versions). It's up to the various descriptions to point to the same blank node, as so many fingers pointing at the Moon, and not the other way round ...
Following this logic, SPEK vocabulary has also be simplified to the extreme ... I don't need "views" and "aspects" any more. Any RDF description is a view and provides a specific aspect. Note also that 'hubject' is back in the SPEK vocabulary, but no more as a class, but as the property linking a description to the binding blank node.

I guess this is now as simple as possible ...

2005-12-09

Forging URI schemes : best or bad practice?

I've posted already about International Virtual Observatory Alliance. It has a forum called IVOA semantics. Current thread is about relevancy of forging new URI schemes, fit for a large community of users (like astronomers) vs http URLs.

The year of the unique ID

Jack forwarded that one. JOHO stands for "Journal of Hyperlinked Organization". Food for thought based on the ISBN case. What does isbn:foo identifies?
  • Work (e.g., Hamlet)

  • Expression (e.g., the Folger's Hamlet with annotations and introduction)

  • Manifestation (a particular print run of Folger's Hamlet)

  • Item (a copy of Folger's Hamlet sitting on a shelf)

Work, expression, manifestation, item : four aspects, in four different perspectives, of the same hubject isbn:foo