Re: How would option b) on the last straw poll of 12 March work?

On 3/16/15 11:15 AM, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
> This is the impasse I'm trying to address with this document. We are 
> in a position where some folks want an implementation and some just 
> want a language definition.

You are presenting this as an exclusive-or choice. The current SHACL 
Spec is primarily a language definition, but it also has an a default 
implementation built-in. How can the latter be a bad thing?

I also remember Jose stating that he cannot proceed writing test cases 
based on the current Spec. But the SPARQL queries serve as a precise 
definition of the semantics, so I do not see why this is blocking him, 
nor anyone who wants to provide a non-SPARQL implementation of the SHACL 
Core Profile.

The natural instinct of previous working groups was to create an 
Abstract Syntax and then some Concrete Syntaxes. But SHACL is a very 
different language, because it already has its own macro facility built 
in, allowing the spec to be nicely self-contained. Implementers just 
need to support a minimum core engine - the rest can be retrieved from 
the definitions in the SHACL Turtle file. This is a very elegant and 
extensible design - much better than hard-coding a random sub-set of the 
language for no convincing reason.

Holger


> I'm trying to separate documents so we can have both and the language 
> definition isn't dependent on the implementation. One reason is to 
> cater to different audiences but a perhaps more pressing reason is 
> that the langugae definiton can have many interoperable 
> implementations without waiting for multiple SPIN implementations.

Received on Monday, 16 March 2015 01:33:20 UTC