Re: Issue 93

Or:

"SHACL is a language for describing information about, and constraints on 
RDF graphs, and a set 
of rules for assessing the conformance of RDF data to those constraints."

This includes:
1. that shapes can also be used to capture interesting metadata
2. that the conformance of a graph to the shapes is assessed and some 
resulting report is provided
3. that shapes can apply to any RDF graph, including OWL or RDFS, not just 
instances.


Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
OSLC and Linked Lifecycle Data
919-525-6575




From:   Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net>
To:     "public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org" <public-data-shapes-wg@w3.org>
Date:   03/30/2016 04:53 PM
Subject:        Issue 93



I agree with Harold that the wording in the draft tends to confound the 
validation description language and the rules for implementing the 
validation. Even in the introduction, it says:

"SHACL (Shapes Constraint Language) is a language for describing and 
constraining RDF graphs."

Which I think could be more clearly stated as:

"SHACL is a language for describing constraints on RDF graphs, and a set 
of rules for applying those constraints to RDF instance data."

(Except "applying" isn't right, because it's really a test, the instance 
data isn't modified, so...)

"SHACL is a language for describing constraints on RDF graphs, and a set 
of rules for *comparing* those constraints to RDF instance data."
or
"SHACL is a language for describing constraints on RDF graphs, and a set 
of rules for testing the conformance of RDF instance data to those 
constraints."

Or something to that effect. The language itself doesn't do any 
constraining, and the "engine" doesn't do any describing, so we clearly 
have (at least) two different things.

Arnaud suggested [1] that we not talk about engines at all. I need to 
think more about that, but would "rules" meet the definition of "not an 
engine"? If so, I could try to at least identify the areas of the spec 
that need modification, and could suggest wording changes to Dimitris 
and Holger. That assumes that in the investigation of the wording a 
deeper problem isn't found between the concepts.

kc
[1] 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-data-shapes-wg/2015Sep/0228.html


--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600