ISSUE-34: extensibility of datatype support [CP]

extensibility of datatype support [CP]

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Technical Design (multiple dialects/documents)

Raised by:

Christopher Welty

Opened on:

2007-09-25

Description:

Datatype support in BLD is extensible, which means that each implementor is
required to support a number of required datatypes, which are specified in the
RIF specification, but it is possible to use
data types which are not on this list. Agreement on such datatypes must be done
out of bound; it is assumed that each datatype is uniquely identified with an
IRI, and that the consumer of an RIF rule set will know how to process such
datatypes, especially the implied equalities.

If an implementor does not know how to
deal with a particular datatype, he should reject the rule set. Therefore,
partners in a rule interchange should not use a datatype unless they know that
the other partner in the interchange knows about the datatype as well.

A possible concern (raised by Sandro) about the fact that the list of datatypes
is extensible is that it might conflict with the RIF extensibility mechanism,
which is not yet defined.

The arguments in favor of extensibility of datatype support which were
mentioned at F2F7 are:
- whereas defining new dialects using an extensibility mechanism is
(potentially) hard to do and requires a lot of work, extensibility of datatype
support is easy; it would certainly be overkill to define a new dialect for
each data type one additionally wants to support
- having extensibility of datatypes support does not change the syntax or
semantics of the language
- RDF and OWL users do not seem to have a problem with this kind of
extensibility (which is present in both languages)

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. [Admin] Agenda RIF telecon May 6 (from csma@ilog.fr on 2008-05-05)
2. data type extenibility (ISSUE-34) (from sandro@w3.org on 2008-04-28)
3. [Admin] Agenda for RIF telecon April 29 (from csma@ilog.fr on 2008-04-28)
4. [rif] draft minutse from 2008-04-01 teleconf (from axel.polleres@deri.org on 2008-04-03)
5. [Admin] Draft minutes for Telecon 20 November 2007 (from der@hplb.hpl.hp.com on 2007-11-20)
6. ISSUE-34: extensibility of datatype support (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2007-09-25)
7. Re: ISSUE-34: extensibility of datatype support (from kifer@cs.sunysb.edu (Michael Kifer) on 2007-09-25)

Related notes:

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