Joint Committee response regarding datatyping

From: Mike Dean (mdean@bbn.com)
Date: 01/10/02


This is the response from the Joint Committee [1] to the RDF
Core Working Group regarding datatyping.

Whatever datatyping facilities are selected by the RDF Core
Working Group, it is the opinion of the Joint Committee that
the primary criterion for RDF datatyping facilities should
be compatibility with existing XML and XML Schema datatyping
facilities.

One of the dimensions by which one can categorize datatyping
proposals is by whether individual values are explicitly or
implicitly typed, e.g. whether each occurrence needs to
specify xsd:integer (explicit) or whether xsd:integer is
specified as the rdfs:range of the property (implicit).  We
believe that RDF should allow users to choose either
approach, and have adopted this approach in DAML+OIL.  The
use of implicit typing allows for compatibility with
existing RDF data and much XML data.  The use of both
implicit and explicit typing allows for an extra check on
the appropriateness of input.  The use of explicit typing
allows for direct control of the typing of data.  We
encourage the RDF Core Working Group to also allow both
explicit and implicit typing, and believe this approach to
be compatible with several of the current datatyping
proposals.

	Mike

[1] http://www.daml.org/committee/


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