[DCAT] accessURLs vs downloadURLs

Hi,
    I've just come across the Candidate Recommendation for DCAT.  It's the
first I'd heard of DCAT and I wanted to give a bit of feedback (I don't
know a great deal about the W3C process, hopefully CR doesn't mean it's too
late).

The main thing I noticed was the ambiguity between accessURLs and
downloadURLs.   I think any spec which contains the words "...when you are
not sure whether it is" could do with more clarification.
Does a downloadURL need to contain the entire dataset, or is it permissible
to specify multiple downloadURLs, each containing part of the dataset?  For
example, if a dataset contains 3 tables, each downloadable as a separate
CSV, can the links to all three be added as downloadURLs?
The definition of accessURL seems like it could be interpreted to include
direct downloads.  Does this mean that downloadURL is a subProperty of
accessURL?  If it is, it'd be nice to have an rdfs:subPropertyOf
relationship in there.  If it isn't, then perhaps the definition of
accessURL needs to make this explicit.

Other than that, I found the inclusion of rdfs:domain on Properties quite
inconsistent.  In my view, all rdfs:Properties should have rdfs:domain and
rdfs:range specified.

Also, http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat.ttl doesn't seem to match everything at
http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/  Is there an up-to-date version of the
ontology in RDF?

Regards,
    Luke Blaney

P.S. Well done on linking out to other ontologies for existing concepts.
 I've noticed a worrying trend recently of people minting their own
concepts for everything.

Received on Sunday, 10 November 2013 17:29:29 UTC