toward SPARQL CR, PR, REC, press releases... schedule review

It's been a while since we discussed our schedule in substance.
With the 14 Sep protocol publication, we completed the LC milestone.
The CR milestone is currently set for October:

[[
~ Oct 2005
        Candidate Recommendation for SPARQL query language, protocol,
        results format, and requirements/use cases 
        
        Dependencies:
        
              * XQuery WG review (rxd 13Sep)
              * meet requirements of ebXML Registry TC and freebXML
                Registry open source implementation? (10 Nov from
                Farrukh)
              * charter calls for "architectural review" by Semantic Web
                Best Practices and Deployment (SWBPD) Working Group 
                
                Wood 26 Sep is relevant, as Wood is a co-chair of SWBPD
                WG
]]
 -- http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/#sched

The risks I see there are:

 - Changes we've made to the QL spec so far motivate another last call.
   With the grammar all set, we could, maybe, do that from 14 to 28 Oct.
   puncutationSyntax and badIRIRef seem to be all over but the crying.
   We'd have to get cracking on [OK?] messages to commentors.

 - the valueTesting and sort issues continue to act
   like difficult-to-drain swamps

 - the design space around the rdfSemantics and owlDisjunction issues
   is somewhat large, and we've only begun to explore it

 - we haven't made any progress on the "W3C QA Guidelines conformance"
   comment. We could perhaps do nothing and try to proceed over
   an objection.

 - The objection from Network Inference saying that SPARQL should have
   used XQuery remains.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg/2004JulSep/0101.html
   In internal discussions, I have been unable
   to come up with a persuasive argument as to why The Director should
   allow SPARQL to advance to CR over that objection.

I'm inclined to go into "shoot the engineers and ship it" mode. That
should not be big news. But I'm inclined to step it up a notch or
two.

I'm prepared to slip some, but I really do want to be at CR by
the 28 November - 1 December 2005 W3C AC meeting.

I'm considering the value of a press release around the SPARQL CR.
I think a lot of people are waiting for SPARQL, and it would be good
to make a lot of noise about CR.

But perhaps the big noise should wait until PR or REC?

I have been reluctant to look that far forward, assuming our normative
dependency on XQuery would keep us in CR for years and years.
But the XQuery WG is making serious noises about getting to CR
in a small number of weeks/months. Hmm... We can't start PR until
they're in PR, because we can't exit PR, i.e. go to REC, until
they're at PR.

Our current charter only goes 'till Jan 2006. I'm moderately inclined
to get to CR and pause for a while, and maybe pick up work toward
PR in the fall of 2006, along with SPARQL v.next requirements work.

Thoughts?

Also, as I have said a number of times, I wanted to have a much smaller
spec (without SOURCE/GRAPH etc.) and finish earlier... since we
didn't meet the April CR milestone, I'm pretty much convinced that
what I want and what this WG wants are pretty different, which doesn't
make me the ideal chair candidate. Anybody who has another chair
candidate should let various W3C staff members know... Eric P,
Eric M, and/or Danny.


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Monday, 3 October 2005 17:05:29 UTC