Re: comments regarding versioning

hello herbert.

On 2015-06-30 09:50, Herbert Van de Sompel wrote:
>> if you think they're similar but not actually the same, what would you say
>> the difference is? i am still struggling to see it, and if they do remain
>> separate, it might be helpful to better explain how they are different.
> Well, the difference is in the nature of the content, by which I mean
> that I have a hard time thinking about a vocabulary as a dataset. But
> other than that, when it comes to versioning, both datasets and
> vocabularies are just resources that can be versioned, and to which
> Memento patterns for version disclosure and version access can be
> uniformly applied.

that's funny, i have a hard time thinking about a vocabulary *not* being 
a dataset. metadata is data, too, it's all a question of perspective. so 
there's no need to make any special rules for something that in some 
context happens to be metadata. many publishers may choose to not expose 
vocabularies in the same way as data (because for example they may not 
have control over them), and i think that makes a lot of sense, but if 
they do choose to publish them as data, normal rules apply.

> Overall, I think I should be happy with the fact that Memento is being
> mentioned with regard to versioning. On the other hand, I am not sure
> why alternatives such as:
> - the use of an "API for version access" mentioned Best Practice 8
> - the use of an "API for access to version history" mentioned in Best Practice 9
> should be promoted, understanding that there is an RFC (7089) (which
> was 4 years in the making) that provides - IMO - all the required
> capabilities and is fully aligned with REST, follow-your-nose. I guess
> this question is related to what the ultimate goal of this document
> is.

memento *is* an API, right? so some may choose memento, others may 
choose other things. BP documents should stay away from starting to 
recommend specific technologies, that usually leads to a lot of fighting 
by technology owners/creators to get their techs in. so i think you're 
in good shape there!

> Maybe Memento is not understood well enough yet. So, maybe it is not
> clear to many how it addresses all these versioning requirements. I
> would be most happy to provide additional information, if that would
> be considered helpful.

like i said, i think you're in good shape there. memento is an RFC which 
is great, and if people try to follow BP, they should be smart enough to 
discover it as one way to solve some of the problems mentioned in the 
document.

what concerns me more right now is the lack of a webby perspective. 
curiously, the current WD does not even mention the terms "hypertext" or 
"hypermedia", which i find rather odd for a document that tries to 
define best practices for publishing anything on the web. the current 
spec is really more *what* to put *on* the web, not so much about *how* 
to make something to be part *of* the web.

to some extent, that's what linked data is doing, but then again, that's 
something that champions a specific set of techs, which like i said 
probably shouldn't be part of any BP. this is the reason why i started 
this little project here, which i should probably switch from being a 
repo to being an actual page/site:

https://github.com/dret/webdata

it's basically talking about how to be nicely webby data, without making 
any assumptions which tech you should choose.

and since hypermedia is such a central part of being webby, another 
little project is here, which tries to classify the ways in which data 
can be hypermedia-ish (ie, webby), and then lists some formats. this one 
needs a lot work (and probably more structure), but i think it can help 
people a lot to better understand how to make data properly webby, 
without having to reinvent the wheel:

https://github.com/dret/hyperpedia

i hope i will get some feedback about the issues i raised, in particular 
the curious absence of webbiness in the current WD. i think it would be 
great to better explain to people that making data webby is a better BP 
than just how to make your data available for download.

cheers,

dret.

-- 
erik wilde | mailto:dret@berkeley.edu  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
            | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
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Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2015 02:37:06 UTC