Re: Proposal for Schema.org extension mechanism

Pat,

CEDS has a URI reference for the ISO 2-digit codes, e.g.
https://ceds.ed.gov/element/000050#IE for Ireland.
It does not (yet) have an element defining the ISO 3-digit country codes,
and the URL when resolved does not (yet) return machine readable content
such as RDF.

I think the the code could be referenced Œauthoritatively¹ using the ISO
site like this: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:IE  I guess it
depends whether you just need an identifier or if you need the definition
returned in a machine readable format when the URI is resolve.

jim

From:  "McBennett, Pat" <McBennettP@DNB.com>
Date:  Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 1:04 PM
To:  "public-vocabs@w3.org" <public-vocabs@w3.org>
Subject:  Re: Proposal for Schema.org extension mechanism
Resent-From:  <public-vocabs@w3.org>
Resent-Date:  Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:05:33 +0000

I totally agree with Martin Hepp¹s comments. I¹ve recently begun exactly the
process Martin describes (i.e. defining ŒWeb ontologies / shared schemas¹),
and already I¹m finding all 3 of his points are spot-on.
 
But I¹d like to ask Martin ­ what form of mechanism does he think could work
for ŒŠtapping into the potential of the many, many interesting schemas and
standards out there [Š] without the need to channel those through the social
and technical process of getting into schema.org core¹?
 
As a very simple example ­ I¹m currently trying to find an existing RDF
schema or standard for International Country Codes, but one which is
Œauthoritative¹. ISO was an obvious place to start, so I asked them if they
could provide these codes as RDF (I can that they currently provide them as
CSV, XML or XLS [1]). Their response:
 
Dear Pat,
 
We do not product any RDF formats, I am sorry.
 
Regards
 
So that means although there are ISO country codes in the public domain
(e.g. IRL, or FRA, or USA), and of course I can use those codes freely,
there are no Œofficial¹ URI¹s out there for those codes (that I¹m aware of)
­ i.e. there is no Œhttp://www.iso.org/country/alpha-3/IRL¹ for Ireland. So
unless I can presuade the ISO to mint these URI¹s for Œtheir¹ country codes
(which I would see as ideal, since they are a recognised authority, but it
seems unlikely in the sort term), what mechanism do I have to use
standardised, authoritative (i.e. as opposed to crowdsourced Wikipedia (or
DBPedia) URI identifiers for countries in my internal datasets? I could mint
my own URI¹s for these country codes under my companies domain name, but
that¹s hardly appropriate as we¹ve no interest in being an authority on
country code identifiers (and we¹d have the maintanance overhead of trying
to keep them in-sync with the Œreal¹ ISO codes)Š
 
Which is why I would have thought an extension to Schema.org might offer a
good opportunity for this (since Schema.org has already become the de facto
authority for lots of things!). But am I just being naïve somehowŠ?
 
Regards,
 
Pat.
 
 
[1] - http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes.htm
 
 
 
 
Pat McBennett
Architect
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