Re: shapes-ISSUE-86 (dimitris): Associating shapes with ontologies or vocabularies [SHACL Spec]

On 10/06/2015 10:43 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:
> On 10/6/2015 9:39, Holger Knublauch wrote:
>
> 
> Option A is the simple case where shapes graph = data graph, and this logical
> graph contains shapes, classes and data (instances). The advantage of this
> design is the simplicity - no need to worry about complex setups, just throw
> everything together. The disadvantage is performance because the system may be
> seeing unnecessary triples from the shapes graph, and even validate them too.
> 
> Option B is a case where shapes graph and data graph are distinct. However,
> since the class definitions (esp the subClassOf triples) are needed as part of
> the data traversal and also to link shapes with classes, the classes subgraph
> is shared between both worlds.
> 
> Are there other options?

[...]

> Holger

There are lots of options, including the three below.

It is possible to separate the data from the ontology from the shapes, with a
data graph, an ontology (in whatever form), and some shapes (in whatever
form).  The advantage here is that the ontology information does not need to
be accounted for in the shapes.  One can think of this as an OWL-DL setup.

It is even possible to separate out the type relationships so that the data
graph does not include them.  One can think of this as a ShEx setup.

Then there is the option that Dimitris described, where there is a bipartite
separation between the shapes on one hand and the data and ontology on the
other.  This setup has the advantage that it handles all existing RDF, RDFS,
and RDF-based OWL data without any changes.


These three options are all technically viable.   There is no need for shapes
and ontology information to be combined into a single graph at any time.
There is no need for data and shapes to be combined into a single graph at any
time.  There is no need to have any information duplicated.


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Nuance Communications

Received on Wednesday, 7 October 2015 14:58:17 UTC