Advanced notice of proposal to be made on our weekly call to move us forward

At the virtual Face to Face meeting last week I made a proposal that was 
rejected by Jose who had missed the discussion leading to it and that was 
generally deemed too important to resolve immediately. After discussion we 
agreed that I would take it to the next teleconference, with advanced 
notice, giving everyone a chance to prepare for it. So, here is for the 
advanced notification:

My proposal will be as follows:

PROPOSED: Adopt Holger's draft as the basis for the SHACL specification, 
leveraging Peter's proposal to improve it, and define a compact syntax for 
it along the lines of ShEX.

As explained in my previous email, I expect that defining the compact 
syntax on top of the SHACL spec will lead to identification of specific 
gaps. I expect us to discuss what to do about each gap on a case by case 
basis: e.g., drop the feature or extend the base/SHACL (possibly beyond 
what SPARQL alone can do, which is consistent with our resolution about 
defining the semantics with SPARQL as much as possible).

Several WG members have expressed interest in also having an abstract 
syntax in various formats. It is reasonable for them to pursue doing so, 
because people may find them useful in various contexts, as long as it is 
understood that the SHACL specification provides the only governing 
semantics. In other words: consistent with resolution of ISSUE-31 (see  
http://www.w3.org/2015/05/20-shapes-minutes.html#resolution03 ), in case 
of discrepency, the SHACL spec is the definitive reference.

Note that references to "the SHACL spec" are not meant to imply that this 
has to be in the form of a single document. The WG remains free to decide 
how many documents to produce.

If this proposal is accepted, Holger's draft will become a Working Draft 
that is under the governance of the WG. As such it will be subject to 
changes in parts or in all, pending WG's resolutions.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Open Web Technologies - 
IBM Software Group