shapes-ISSUE-117 (non-classes as classes): sh:class should not require that its objects be known to be instances of rdfs:Class [SHACL - Core]

shapes-ISSUE-117 (non-classes as classes): sh:class should not require that its objects be known to be instances of rdfs:Class [SHACL - Core]

http://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/117

Raised by: Peter Patel-Schneider
On product: SHACL - Core

Currently the spec says:

The property sh:class can be used to verify that each value of the given property is an instance of a given type. The values of sh:class must be classes (instances of rdfs:Class).

In Holger's implementation this is checked in conjunction with the data graph, meaning that a SHACL shape's syntactic correctness depends on the data graph.

Instead, objects sh:class triples should not need to be instances of rdfs:Class.  This means that the shape

[ rdf:type sh:Shape; sh:scopeClass pp:Person ]

should be syntactically correct.