From: "Pete Johnston" <[log in to unmask]>
> I must admit that I found some of Rachel and Andy's exchanges a little bit
> hard to follow and I think in part it was because of terminology.
>
> I think we all occasionally get ourselves into difficulties (well,
speaking
> for myself, I do!) by using the word "schema" somewhat loosely to talk
about
> at least three (probably more) different things:
>
> (i) sets of "semantic units", in the abstract, which include what we call
> the units, what they mean, and how they are related;
> (ii) specific _representations_ of those semantic unit sets in a
particular
> machine-readable form (like an RDF schema - or indeed a set of records in
an
> RDBMS!), which typically include unique identifiers for the units, labels,
> definitions, and statements of relationships;
> (iii) structural/syntactic models associated with those unit sets (like
XML
> schema, XML DTDs)
I think there are only 3 things here:
1) grammar
2) a subset of vocabulary called properties
3) communications
So if we don't want to talk about schemas, we could talk instead of the
grammar and the property words in our communications.
... of course our terms may have grown so complex that I misunderstood the
entire drift of your message ... alas ...
Seth Russell
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