What we voted on at the f2f

We clearly have different interpretations of the meaning of our vote at 
the face-to-face, which was:

RESOLUTION: Define semantics using SPARQL as much as possible

My view may be naive, but I took this to mean that the specification 
would use SPARQL as the "abstract language" to define the meaning of the 
SHACL vocabulary. The minutes of the f2f show that the vote was taken in 
the context of a discussion of the "normative expression" for SHACL, and 
a "formalism." Others suggested included the use of Z as a formalism, 
but that didn't get much traction.

There is another view, which is that the SHACL specification describes a 
SPARQL implementation, although other implementations are not excluded. 
This view treats the specification as a description of the SPARQL 
implementation, referring to it as a "built-in" language for SHACL. In 
this view, there is no "abstract language" formally defining SHACL.

I see a rather large gap between using SPARQL as a formalism in the 
specification, and assuming that the SHACL standard is a SPARQL 
implementation. In fact, I don't think that we made a decision as to the 
implementation of SHACL or to any stated relationship between SHACL as a 
specification and any particular implementations of SHACL.

However, as I said, my view may be naive, but I wonder if we can't 
clarify at least what we voted on at the f2f, since we seem to be 
intoning that vote in our discussion here with at least two different 
meanings.

kc
-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600

Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2015 17:04:59 UTC