[rdfweb-dev] FoaF RDF structure question(s)...

[Danny Ayers]

> Is it possible/legal to nest FoaF RDF envelopes inside other envelopes
> in order to create context for a given assertion?   For example, if I
> want to assert that I know someone in only in relationship to a given
> project, is it legal to keep the "knows" RDF for specific people inside
> a "currentPorject" envelope?

If I understand your question correctly, yes and no ;-)
You can certainly make the assertions, but generally speaking they'd leak
out of the envelope - A knows B globally, irrespective of context. The
triple just gets a life of its own. It is possible to talk in terms of
envelopes/contexts by reifying the statements, though this can get
cumbersome. You could modify the statements a little to include blank nodes
wrapping together the relationships (not exactly sure offhand how this would
go - felt tip pen time). It's also certainly possible to work around this in
practice at the application level - with Jena you have Model instances
(which correspond to RDF/XML files), which could be considered like
localised envelopes, also I believe Redland supports contexts explicitly.
Graham Klyne looked into this stuff quite a bit [1].

I'd be very much interested in hearing if (and how) anyone's actually
tackled this scenario - danbri?

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://public.research.mimesweeper.com/RDF/RDFContexts.html