List of open SHACL Core Syntax ISSUEs

Looking through the tracker tickets, many remaining tickets are rather 
editorial, but the following aspects of the SHACL Core syntax are 
currently unresolved.

ISSUE-133, ISSUE-135 and ISSUE-141: sh:Shape vs. sh:constraint vs. sh:node

The three tickets above are related, and I have seen various proposals 
with individual pros and cons.

a) Leaving as-is, i.e. representing node constraints as separate objects 
via sh:constraint.
+ Would mean: no further changes are needed
+ Syntax is similar to sh:property, i.e. each constraint is linked to a 
shape via a property

b) As b) but renaming sh:constraint to something like sh:node
+ Would make the syntax more consistent with sh:property and sh:sparql

c) Merging sh:Shape and sh:NodeConstraint, attaching parameters such as 
sh:closed directly to shape
+ Better syntax to express mixed ranges (ISSUE-141) and sh:and/sh:or 
(ISSUE-135)
+ Arguably simpler metamodel

I am undecided but would welcome discussion around this topic so that we 
can further stabilize the language. Adopting c) would have quite some 
impact on the terminology because we would drop node constraints. Such a 
change should be made before another editorial swipe through the whole 
document. If we don't want to go this way, we should at least have a 
decision and then close the related tickets.


Other tickets in the syntax category, less urgent:

- ISSUE-92: sh:partition vs qualifiedCount - waiting for input from Eric 
and/or Iovka
- ISSUE-137: Should we add a constraint component for language tags?
- ISSUE-139: universal applicability (has little impact on core syntax, 
yet impacts the metamodel/SPARQL)
- ISSUE-169: Renaming sh:scopeProperty to sh:scopeSubjectsOf

Regards,
Holger

Received on Tuesday, 12 July 2016 03:09:21 UTC