[rdfweb-dev] Describing FOAF using OWL: enumerating allowed property values

[Dan Brickley]

<snip/>

Thanks for the suggestion. I find using containers and collections together
gets pretty confusing.

One similar idea is to wrap each allowed value in a proper URI-named 
resource, labelled (rdfs:label I guess) with it's shortened form.
So instead of 
<Person>
 <myersBriggs>ENTP</myersBriggs>
</Person>

you'd have:

<Person>
  <myersBriggs rdf:resource="http://example.com/mbvalues/#ENTP"/>
</Person>

Or

Person>
  <myersBriggs rdf:resource="&mbv;ENTP"/>
</Person>

...if you've happy using XML entities to hide URI-based verbosity.

My preference is for literal values because I want to minimise the 
verbosity, and only use URIs where there's a clear gain, eg. from data 
merging.

I think this speaks for itself. It is much simpler and cleaner to have 
the <foaf:foo>bar</foaf:foo> form of property. Easier for people to 
type correctly. Also we don't have to explain, for a large class of 
properties, what all this rdf:resource= stuff does. We can leave those,
mostly, for properties whose value is more conventionally expected to 
be a URI.

I am happy with the 'RDF tax' associated with explaining why we 
write:

<foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://example.com/myhomepage/" />
<foaf:schoolHomepage rdf:resource="http://somewhereistudied.example.org/" />
<foaf:workplaceHomepage rdf:resource="http://somewhereiwork.example.com/" />

...since these take as their values URIs which are in widespread use, and 
which users are likely to encounter.

Tricky to know where to draw  the line, but I think things like the 
myersBriggs values (there are exactly 16), food preferences, marital 
status etc are on the other side of that line.

Hmm side-thought: for properties like 'schoolHomepage', we could have a 
Javascript bookmarklet in toolbar which could take you off to a 
'describe your relationship to the organisation whose homepage this is' 
form in the foaf-a-matic vein. Or for that matter, into FOAF aggregators,
so you could, for a given page, search FOAF data for people who work there, 
study there, etc.

Dan