RDF, ID's, XPtrs, and object orientation

[Jeffrey E. Sussna]

I am struggling with the following limitation caused by RDF's use of ID attributes:

I want to use RDF in a truly object-oriented fashion. It lets me get really close but not quite there. I would like to use the "subPropertyOf" element to indicate overriding. However, since property names are ID's, I can't override by name. I could use XPointer to refer to overridden names (in effect referring to "the property whose name is foo and whose class is bar"), but I can't actually define the bar version of foo and the baz version of foo in the same document. Of course, if I could specify a key composed of multiple attributes, my problems would be solved. 

I realize I can also avoid the problem by putting each "class" in a separate document, but this causes problems of its own in my particular application. 

If anyone has a hint as to how to get around this issue, that would be great, otherwise it's just food for thought. 

Jeff 

P.S. I am finding the problem of ID conflicts between "fragments" that need to be created separately and then combined into a single document to be a general one. My approach has been not to use ID attributes, but I don't have a choice if I'm using RDF. I suppose it will work as long as I don't validate, but I really want to validate.

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Kuantech, Inc.                            http://www.kuantech.com
Jeffrey E. Sussna, Principal                     jes at kuantech.com

Distributed Content Architectures for Dynamic Online Applications
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