Re: [topicmaps-comment] Re: RDF/Topic Maps: late/lazy reification vs.early/preemptive reification

[Piotr Kaminski <piotr@ideanest.com>]

[Thomas B. Passin]
> 2) We make each of the member elements of the club association the
subject
> of a topic (thus reifying the member).  Now we can assert (using an
> association) who the sponsor of that person for that club is, and we do
not
> have to dismember or change anything we already have in the map, unless
it
> is to make sure that we have one member arc per person, nor do we have
to
> change the meaning of the original "cluc" association.

Could you expand on this, perhaps giving an example in XTM format?  It
sounds like exactly what's needed, though it also resembles manual
reification.

> Why is this different from RDF?  Because with topic maps, you get
> pre-reified structures (reified in the RDF sense, that is) -
associations,
> members, etc.  This gives you power if the structures are the kind you
need,
> and it gives RDF flexibility in case they are not.

Disclaimer:  I'm no RDF expert.  Could you not, in RDF, give a statement
an ID, then refer to the statement through that ID as a resource, thus
potentially using it as the subject of other statements?  Basically doing
the same thing as you seem to be proposing above.

Also, I don't think TM pre-reifies its structures in the same sense as
RDF.  After all, in RDF, a reified statement consists of 4 more nodes and
3 more statements that detail its structure.  In TM, no such extra nodes
or statements are automatically created by the pre-reification.   (It's
debatable whether this "structural reification" is useful or not, of
course.)

        -- P.

--
  Piotr Kaminski <piotr@ideanest.com>  http://www.ideanest.com/
  "It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance."