RE: Use machine-readable standardized data formats / Use non-proprietary data formats

+1

-----Original Message-----
From: Makx Dekkers [mailto:mail@makxdekkers.com] 
Sent: 13 August 2015 12:15
To: public-dwbp-wg@w3.org
Subject: RE: Use machine-readable standardized data formats / Use non-proprietary data formats

All,

I very much agree with Tomas here.

I think this group is supposed to give advice to people who have today's
data and want to know how to best publish it on the Web, not paint a picture
of how the world of data may look in ten or twenty year's time. I think
today's data is mostly not ready for that quantum jump. Not catering for
today's needs means this group will be writing science fiction. That can be
entertaining but is maybe not so useful.

I also agree with his WordPerfect argument. Publishers should be encouraged
to publish original data in whatever format they have it. In addition, the
advice should be to provide the data also in additional and higher-starred
formats to make it more useful. 

Annette seems to suggest that "documents" are out of scope. I think the
outcome of earlier discussions was that the definition of "data" is very
broad and includes all kinds of digital resources on the Web. As an example,
all the stuff on http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ is text and all of it is on
the Web; it has the whole range of issues: formats (PDF, HTML, XML),
identification, versioning, archiving, metadata, multilingualism,
granularity etc. etc. Let's not throw that out.

Makx.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Manuel.CARRASCO-BENITEZ@ec.europa.eu
> [mailto:Manuel.CARRASCO-BENITEZ@ec.europa.eu]
> Sent: 13 August 2015 11:19
> To: mark.harrison@gs1.org; amgreiner@lbl.gov
> Cc: phila@w3.org; mark.harrison@cantab.net; public-dwbp-wg@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Use machine-readable standardized data formats / Use non-
> proprietary data formats
> 
> Mark,
> 
> Data is a hard problem and this is aiming quite high:
> 
>   "... the web as an electronic delivery mechanism for structured data in
open
> formats ..."
> 
> Other groups address visualisation, etc.
> 
> We are the miller group with the objective to produce standardised flour:
not
> over-glamorous, but necessary . Other groups are for bakery, pastry, etc.
:-)
> 
> Regards
> Tomas
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Mark Harrison [mark.harrison@gs1.org]
> Sent: 13 August 2015 07:51
> To: Annette Greiner; CARRASCO BENITEZ Manuel (DGT)
> Cc: phila@w3.org; Mark Harrison; public-dwbp-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Use machine-readable standardized data formats / Use   non-
> proprietary data formats
> 
> Hi Annette,
> 
> I completely agree with you that the discussion should be about how to
> encourage people to move beyond / away from publishing static immutable
> documents and towards publishing live (data + models + interactive
> visualisations) on the web that are open, interactive and collaborative
and
> make it as easy as possible for people and machines to retrieve, combine,
> compare, re-analyse and re-visualise data from multiple sources just as
easily
> as people can use web technology to collaborate on open source software
> today.
> 
> If our focus appears to be primarily on the web as an electronic delivery
> mechanism for structured data in open formats, we're probably aiming far
> too low and not giving people enough of a bold vision about what live,
> interactive, collaborative, mashable data on the web could be like in the
> future.
> 
> There are already some sites such as openspending.org that are making good
> progress in that direction.  There are also toolkits and frameworks such
as
> d3.js that make this vision easier to achieve.  We can probably find and
> critique other examples and comment on the aspects that they do well, as
> well as aspects where they could improve further.  In this way, we can
> explain the big vision for what 'data on the web' really could be, if done
well.
> 
> As Erik says, it needs to be webby.  That could mean that the raw data and
> the data transformations and visualisation are all fully interlinked on
the web
> in the finest detail, potentially down to the granularity of each
individual
> datapoint.  Furthermore, if we want to find related datasets for
comparison,
> we should be able to easily retrieve those and overlay them within the
same
> live visualisation - or even try modelling or visualising the data in
different
> ways, all interactively and collaboratively on the web.
> 
> Even with 5-star linked open data, we can link to existing data but cannot
> immediately link to future data that has not yet been generated - so
instead
> we also need to provide rich metadata that describes the scope, coverage
> and granularity of the data well.  In future, we might expect that web
search
> engines can not only help us to retrieve datasets and their metadata - but
> allow us to tweak any of the metadata parameters in order to search for
> related datasets, e.g. to find similar economic data about a different
country
> or different organisation - or to find related scientific data for a
related
> material - or for the same material studied using a different but related
> experimental technique, so that we can compare the data easily, without
> having to spend so much effort tracking down the data, reverse-engineering
> charts and graphs to extract data, etc.
> 
> To some extent, web technology already exists to enable the whole Data
> Model, View and Controller to all be entirely web-based, resulting in a
live,
> interactive, collaborative space for data sharing and analysis, which has
so
> many advantages over static published documents.  My reference to D3.js
> was one example of such technology.  I think it's a good thing to point
people
> to multiple toolkits and frameworks that they can already use to implement
> the bold vision of truly collaborative, interactive data on the web.
> 
> I think we would miss a great opportunity if this group cannot clearly
explain
> to everyone (including any member of the public) what that bold vision for
> 'data on the web' could be like.  It could go far beyond providing
datasets via
> the web.
> 
> Some people may take the time to read rather dry documents of best
> practices and might even understand some of them.  Others may understand
> the vision better if we can point to existing real examples of 'data on
the web
> done very well' and explain which aspects they currently do very well -
and
> what they could do even better.  The 'gold standard' is probably a blend
of
> the best aspects of several existing examples.
> 
> When everyone can understand how data that is truly live on the web has
> the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of research and data
analysis
> and generation of new insights in so many different fields, then the best
> practices documents from this group become a highly relevant and practical
> step-by-step instruction manual to help everyone achieve that vision.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> - Mark
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov>
> Sent: 12 August 2015 18:31
> To: Manuel.CARRASCO-BENITEZ@ec.europa.eu
> Cc: phila@w3.org; Mark Harrison; public-dwbp-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Use machine-readable standardized data formats / Use   non-
> proprietary data formats
> 
> You're not seriously suggesting people should make data available in word
> perfect format, are you?
> This discussion seems to be wandering into the realm of publishing
> documents.
> 
> --
> Annette Greiner
> NERSC Data and Analytics Services
> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
> 510-495-2935
> 
> On Aug 12, 2015, at 7:28 AM, Manuel.CARRASCO-BENITEZ@ec.europa.eu
> wrote:
> 
> > One should have at least the following variants of the resource:
> >
> > - Original     : foo.wp  - WordPerfect 3.0 ~1982, perhaps still
processable
> > - Content      : foo.txt - textual, hopefully processable in 100 years
> > - Presentation : foo.tif - TIFF ~1986, perhaps still viewable, might
> > be foo.ps
> >
> > So:
> >  - http://example.com/foo     - negotiate and give me the best
> >  - http://example.com/foo.wp  - I can still process WP
> >  - http://example.com/foo.txt - I want to process the text, no
> > presentation
> >  - http://example.com/foo.tif - I really want to see how the doc looks
> >
> > Regards
> > Tomas
> >
> >> Perhaps the way we can formulate this is to say that some document
> >> formats (such as PDF, .doc / .docx and even .xls / .xlsx ) are
> >> concerned with presentation of information in a particular format or
> >> layout and therefore carry a significant amount of typesetting /
> >> formatting information overhead in addition to the underlying data.
> >> Furthermore, at the time those document-centric formats were
> >> developed, ease of access to the underlying data and the unambiguous
> >> meaning of specific data fields might not have been the main priority
> >> in their design.
> >>
> >> When the main priority is to ensure that the underlying data is
> >> available on the web so that others can re-use it, we recommend using
> >> simpler data formats such as CSV, TSV, JSON (or better still
> >> JSON-LD), RDF or XML.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Received on Thursday, 13 August 2015 11:55:03 UTC