Re: Different dataset views and services in Dataset Schema

Hi Will,

Thanks for your suggestions.  I would have replied sooner, but I
missed your email the first time around.



On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Will Pugh <will.pugh@socrata.com> wrote:
[...]
> My understanding is that the main goal of the schema.org it to create
> schemas useful to search engines, rather than the broader goals of projects
> like Linked Data that want to create a "Global Data Space".  Is this a
> correct assessment?


I believe so, but there are others on this list who could give a more
authoritative and complete answer.



> With that assumption, I've got a few scenarios I wanted to ask about, with
> the idea that these scenarios may describe relationships interesting to
> search engines.
>
> 1)  Is there a way to describe "derived datasets"?


No, although I think this is a good idea.  I imagine this would be
useful from a licensing perspective (however, schema.org does not deal
with licensing) as well as for making the related / super-dataset
discoverable.  However, I don't think it's very specific to datasets;
IMHO, it would make more sense at the CreativeWork level.  If such a
term were in DCAT, perhaps it would make sense to include an
equivalent term in the extension and then propose that it be moved up
to CreativeWork.



> 2)  Would it make sense to describe an API on top of a dataset instead of
> simply a dataset.


This is a very important question.  It would be reasonable to allow a
Dataset distribution to be either a data download, a web service, or a
feed, as in DCAT, *if* there were a straightforward mapping to
schema.org types and properties.  However, schema.org does not have an
equivalent of DCAT's Distribution class (which is a superclass of
Download, WebService, and Feed), and I don't even see a proposal for
feed or web service types.  That means that in order to allow the
distribution property to point to any of the three types of resources,
either schema.org would need to allow multiple types in the range of a
property, or we would have to add four new types to schema.org just
for distributions.  Alternatively, separate properties could be added
for feeds and web services.  In any case, two additional types would
need to be added to schema.org.  Since those types are relatively
fundamental, I suspect they would need to be the subject of other,
individual proposals.



> 3)  Would it make sense to have a type which refers to a view or a dataset?
> For example, if I have a page that contains a graph that contains number of
> people with different salaries at the White House, would it make sense to be
> able to express to a search engine that the graph is using the
> "2011-Report-to-Congress-on-White-House-Staff" dataset?


This looks like another use for the derivedFrom property you suggested above.


Best regards,

Joshua


>
>
>
>     Thanks,
>     --Will

Received on Monday, 16 July 2012 16:36:05 UTC