RDF is fine with one 'thing' having multiple identifiers, it just hands
the problem up a level to the application to deal with.

For example, the owl:sameAs predicate is used to express that the
subject and object are the same 'thing'.  Then the application can infer
that if a owl:sameAs b, and a x y, then b x y.

Rob

On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 13:00 +0100, Mike Taylor wrote:
> Alexander Johannesen writes:
>  > Anyway, I'm suspecting I don't see what the problem seems to be. To
>  > create "the best identifier" for things seems a bit of a strange
>  > notion to me, but is this based on that there is only (or rather,
>  > that you're trying to create) one identifier for any one thing?
> 
> Yes, this is exactly it.  RDF things that each concept should have
> exactly one identifier; Topic Maps says its fine to have multiple
> identifiers.  That seems to be 99% of the conceptual difference
> between them.
> 
> My position: it seems obvious that one is the CORRECT number of
> identifiers for a thing to have.  But since we live in a formal
> world, the Topics Map approach may be more practical.
> 
> In other words, I might end up _advocating_ Topic Maps, but don't
> expect me to _like_ it :-)
> 
>  _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
> /o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
> )_v__/\  "I think it's too consistently wrong not to be fixable" --
> 	 Phil Baldwin.