Re: [xtm-wg] Reification

["univers immedia" <universimmedia@wanadoo.fr>]

Thanks Dan to confirm "from inside" the RDF viewpoint on that matter.

The proposed formulation seems basically to get agreement from Murray, Paul
and Dan,
but some restrictions from Sam given the "semantic overload" and ambiguity
of the word,
not to speak of other ones that the very word of reification seems to make
fly away with no explicit understandable reasons.

So I'll push the reflection a little further on - only personal viewpoint
again, for what it's worth.

1. Both RDF and XTM allow two similar reification processes :
In RDF : a statement can be reified - creating a new object that can be
used in higher level statements.
In XTM : an association can be reified - creating a new topic that can be
used in higher level associations.

"Mutatis mutandis", a RDF statement carries the same type of semantic
information than a XTM association does,
e.g. "Shakespeare's Hamlet was edited and commented by author X in 1987
under ISBN ..."
Reification of such a statement/association allows to include it at upper
level, e.g. "comments of Y in publication Z about this commented edition".

If we stick to this syntactic or system level, and to the above situations,
we get parallel and very consistent definitions, and my hunch is convergent
efforts should quickly find ways to convert a RDF statement into a XTM
association and the other way round.

2. RDF sticks for the moment to the above scope in its definition of
reification.
XTM sticks its neck a little further, at least in the conceptual model,
since not only associations can be reified - through fully implemented
systematic processes - but "any subject" can be reified ...  even for all
purposes "any RDF statement".
Which means that on the ground of "who can reify the other", XTM is clearly
the winner so far :)

Anyway we'll certainly have to refine subtypes of reification processes,
since implemented processes creating RDF reified statements or XTM reified
associations are basically quite different from the "human authoring"
process defining a Topic "out of real world", even if the result in the
system is the same type of object. Maybe, for clarity of vocabulary, and
the very confusion dangers that Sam pointed out, we should keep the
"reification" term for any internal system process, and introduce another
word for the "human to machine" process. Suggestions ?

For those being afraid of this highly risky ground : you don't get rid af a
word's ambiguities in getting rid of the word. If a word is semantically
overloaded or ambiguous, try to sort out its different meanings. That is
exactly : define scopes for those different meanings. That way, you expand
knowledge, that is : accuracy of language.

Bernard

----- Message d'origine -----
De : Dan Brickley <daniel.brickley@bristol.ac.uk>
À : <xtm-wg@yahoogroups.com>
Cc : archive <ontologystream@egroups.com>; David Bromberg
<dbromberg@acappellasoftware.com>
Envoyé : dimanche 28 janvier 2001 11:08
Objet : Re: [xtm-wg] Reification


> On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Murray Altheim wrote:
>
> > Paul Prueitt wrote:
> > >
> > > The defintional phrase:
> > >
> > >  "Reification is a process through which a computable/addressable
object - a
> > > resource - is created in a system, as a proxy for a non
> > > computable/addressable object"
> > >
> > > is perfect.
> >
> > Yes, that seems basically in harmony with what we've discussed within
> > TopicMaps.Org. The editors are currently following up on our recent
> > discussions in Paris and hope to add the subject explicitly to our
> > specification for its next publication. As I mentioned, we'd avoided
> > it in the past due to the somewhat different concept used in RDF.
>
> [an RDF lurker writes...]
>
> That also seems broadly consistent with RDF's use of 'reification'
> to create representations of RDF triples/statements. Perhaps the main
> difference is that the RDF Model+Syntax spec only talks about the
reification
> of RDF statements, and not about people/places/topics etc. One problem
> we have (for RDF anyway) when trying to articulate a broader notion of
> reification is then in deciding where we draw the representational line
between
> 'computable/addressable' objects and those objects that need to be
> represented via a proxy / stand-in resource. People don't tend to have
> URIs; mailboxes do. Physical books don't; whatever-it-is-that-URIs-name
> do. And so on. If our crititeria for deciding when to call it
> 'reification' is related to our ability to use a URI name for the object
> directly, the distinction seems somewhat fragile and
> time-sensitive. Perhaps that's why RDF sticks with a more restrictive
> use of the term 'reification', only applying it to the reification of
> statements.
>
> Don't know if this helps, but thought I'd chime in with an RDFish
> perspective.
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
>
>
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