Re: Naive question on DCAT versioning

I believe DCAT in its current form adequately covers the "revision"
issue and should not be overloaded with fine-grained revision
management features. In its current state, providers can express
catalog and dataset update dates; if necessary, clarifications can be
expressed in other properties (such as "Description" or even "Title').
In DCAT today, providers have something they can use.

It is beyond the scope of DCAT to express detailed revision history,
and it is beyond the scope of W3C GLD to take up the discussion. The
"jury is still out" on practical ways to do this; PROV-O is certainly
the pathway there, and adopters are welcome to experiment and generate
exemplars. Lets get some good practical examples in the wild, then
perhaps talk about extending DCAT (officially or simply by common
practice).

John

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:29 AM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> OK, I'm glad the issue is being picked up. And have to apologize for the
> extra work this potentially implies...
> Unfortunately I do not have the bandwidth to be involved in every coming
> design or documentation discussion. But I'll be ready to read anything you
> end up with, and would like some feedback on!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
> ---
> Antoine Isaac
> Scientific Coordinator, Europeana.eu
> http://few.vu.nl/~aisaac/
>
>
>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This is clearly an important issue, and a complex one.  As you'll see
>> below, it was originally in scope for this Working Group as a part of Best
>> Practices — but we decided to park it, due to the lack of resources within
>> our group.
>>
>> I'd encourage the DCAT editors and commenters to find a short-term (but
>> effective) way to settle this for DCAT and ADMS, with the understanding that
>> further work is necessary to approach versioning for all open data.
>>
>> (And, of course, I would encourage you all to get involved in future
>> working groups to tackle this issue!)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>     Hadley
>>
>>
>> Hadley Beeman
>> Co-chair
>> W3C Government Linked Data Working Group
>>
>>
>> Versioning was recognised in our original charter:  [1]
>>
>>       2.2 Best Practices for Publishing Linked Data
>>
>>      • Versioning. The group will specify how to publish data which has
>> multiple versions, including variations such as:
>>
>>                 • data covering different time periods
>>                 • corrected data about the same time period
>>                 • the same data published using different vocabularies,
>> formats, and presentation styles
>>                 • retracting published data
>>
>> However — we did take the decision, as a working group, to "only briefly
>> discuss" versioning in the forthcoming Best Practices note, because "We
>> don't have the time/expertise to do more." [3]
>>
>> It's also worth mentioning that "publishing and accessing versions of
>> datasets" is currently within the scope of the draft charter for the Data on
>> the Web Best Practices Working Group. [4]  That group should have the time
>> and capacity to explore this issue with the depth it deserves.
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/charter
>> [2]
>> http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/Best_Practices_Discussion_Summary#Versioning
>> [3] http://www.w3.org/2013/04/11-gld-minutes.html
>> [4] http://www.w3.org/2013/05/odbp-charter.html
>>
>>
>> On 31 Jul 2013, at 19:45, Ghislain Atemezing wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Antoine,
>>>
>>> Sorry if I missed your point in my previous mail...
>>>>
>>>> @Ghislain: I'm not sure I understand your point: "as far as it is
>>>> reflected in the metadata, such as dct:modified" seems to hint that you're
>>>> just updating an existing instance of dcat:Dataset. But my point is about
>>>> when there is a *new resource* of dcat:Dataset, as explained above.
>>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/#Class:_Dataset does not say anything
>>>> about whether such treatment is allowed or discouraged in DCAT. And thus if
>>>> ADMS is compliant with DCAT or not.
>>>
>>>
>>> Now that I read the entire thread with Makx, I understand better your
>>> point. And I agree there is nothing at the moment in DCAT to handle that
>>> issue properly.
>>> I wonder if this issue of versioning affects only DCAT. Maybe one
>>> solution could be to help the user by clarifying it somewhere in the spec;
>>> or maybe handling it like in the ORG vocabulary [1] by creation
>>> a dcat:DataSetEvent by linking to PROV-O vocabulary (e.g: with
>>> prov:wasDerivedFrom property).
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Ghislain
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-org/#org:ChangeEvent
>>> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#wasDerivedFrom
>>
>>
>
>



-- 
John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
Director, Web Science Operations
Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
<http://tw.rpi.edu> <olyerickson@gmail.com>
Twitter & Skype: olyerickson

Received on Thursday, 1 August 2013 13:56:48 UTC