Re: RDF query testcase requirements: IRC chat?

hi all

My apologies for starting this thread and then not replying - I've been
away.

The discussion has been very interesting, and I'd like to try the idea
of an IRC chat this week so see if that can help us come up with
something useful. I still think that it would be very useful to come up
with a common way of describing a very simple conjunctive RDF query, but
I propose that we leave that for possible later meetings, depending on
how this one goes.

Instead, I suggest that we discuss possibilities for a flexible
manifest format for RDF query language testcases. I've compiled a
proposed agenda below. I've *moved the meeting time* from 5 pm GMT to
3pm GMT because of a clash with the W3C Webont working group meeting.

Here's a link to the various times 3pm Thursday 27th February is in
different timezones.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=27&month=2&year=2003&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=0

The meeting will last one hour. Depending on how it goes we may decide
on a future meeting time during the chat.

The channel we will use is the RDF interest group channel:
irc.freenode.net, channel #rdfig. This channel is publically logged at

http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/rdfig/

and I will also send around a summary of discussions to this list
afterwards.

-----
Aim of the meeting

To start to draft a manifest format for RDF query testcases which can
be used with multiple query syntaxes and perhaps multiple resultset
formats. I propose that we use the following manifest format as
something to start with, although I'm well aware that it's a bit rough:

http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/rdfquery/tests/query-results-manifest.rdf

It is likely that the manifest format will not be suitable for all RDF
query languages, although we will try to be as inclusive as possible.

-----
Proposed agenda
Please contact me or the list if you would like to add anything.


1. Requirements for a RDF query testcase format.

1.1 What sorts of things do we need in a RDF query testcase manifest
format? Does

http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/rdfquery/tests/query-results-manifest.rdf

sufficiently cover everyone's needs?

1.2 What do we intend to do with testcases expressed in this format?

1.3 Is RDF the best syntax?


2. Describing the query itself in the manifest format.

2.1 Is linking to a file or url for the query sufficient? or do we also
need to provide for in-line queries?

2.2 How can be best describe the different syntactic formats we will
have for the queries?


3. Describing the resultset formats.

3.1 Again, there may be different resultset formats, for example Andy
Seaborne's:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw/2003Jan/0046.html

do we need to be able to distinguish between these?

3.2 Relatedly, how much about the results should go into the resultset
and how much in the manifest, for example the variable names, number of
rows returned?


4. Source files.

4.1 These may be in different formats (RDF/XML, N-triples), do we need
to distinguish them?

4.2 Should we allow more than one source file?

------

This is too much for one meeting, but I've put it all here so people can
see the sort of approach we might take.

cheers

Libby

Received on Tuesday, 25 February 2003 09:08:47 UTC