Re: Question about CSVW

> On Oct 7, 2021, at 11:18 AM, aannane <amina.annane@irit.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
>  
> I have a small question about the CSVW vocabulary (https://www.w3.org/ns/csvw <https://www.w3.org/ns/csvw>):
>  
> According to the published documentation, the "CSVW" schema is the same as the "Metadata Vocabulary for Tabular Data" schema, however "Metadata Vocabulary for Tabular Data" is a recommendation while "CSVW" is an internal document « This document is merely a W3C-internal document. It has no official standing of any kind and does not represent consensus of the W3C Membership… »
>  
> Could you please clarify this for me? (I mean why CSVW is not a recommandation as he has the same schema as "Metadata Vocabulary for Tabular Data")

The document at https://www.w3.org/ns/csvw <https://www.w3.org/ns/csvw>, is technically the "CSVW Namespace Vocabulary Terms”, which is the RDFS definition of the terms used by the Metadata document. Through content-negotiation, it’s available as Turtle and JSON-LD as well as the HTML seen here. Strictly speaking, RDF (or even JSON-LD) is not required for woking with Tabular Metadata; the document describes the semantics of JSON terms used within a metadata document, which are consistent with JSON-LD, but more strictly controlled to allow non-RDF aware toolchains to make use of it.

This is consistent with other RDF namespace documents which often accompany other specs, which are non-normative. For example, the RDF Schema recommendation (https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-rdf-schema-20140225/ <https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-rdf-schema-20140225/>) defines core RDF/RDFS terminology normatively, but the defined terms are in http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema> and http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns, which are not themselves recommendations. Common practice now is to publish RDF namespace documents in HTML along with other serialization formats such as Turtle and JSON-LD.

Also related is that the Recommendations make normative statements (e.g., "Tabular data must conform to the description from [tabular-data-model]”) while vocabulary documents typically do not.

Gregg

>  
> Thank you
>  
> Best regards,
>  
> -- 
> Amina ANNANE
>  
> PostDoc at MELODI team – IRIT laboratory
> University of Paul Sabatier
> TOULOUSE FRANCE
> amina.annane@irit.fr <mailto:amina.annane@irit.fr>