RE: reviewing the BP doc

 

Laufer,

 

I think you making things more complicated than they are. Distributions are not ‘instances’ of the ‘abstract thing’ Dataset. The instances of the class Dataset are datasets and the instances of the class Distribution are distributions. I think the specification of DCAT is quite clear how this works, and it includes lots of examples.

 

Makx.

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting.

 

Just thinking.

 

If a specific Dataset is an abstract thing it will be the type of that collection of distributions, the instances of that type.

 

So why we are calling the instances distributions and not Datasets? 

 

Is a distribution a Dataset?

 

(I am asking)

 

Man is an abstract thing. I am an instance of Man. I am a Man.

 

It seems to me that we are defining a Dataset as the type of a set of distributions. But is this the idea of DCAT?

 

A csv file and an xml file of a Dataset, with the same data, are different instances of a Dataset? The fact that they are in different formats implies in being different instances? 

 

If two distributions has not the same data from an abstract Dataset, they are two different instances of that Dataset or they are different views of that Dataset?

 

Laufer

 



Em segunda-feira, 29 de junho de 2015, Makx Dekkers <mail@makxdekkers.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mail@makxdekkers.com');> > escreveu:

*  I don't think that a Dataset is an abstract thing. But I agree that distributions of a Dataset (DCAT definition) are instances of the same Dataset source.  And this is one of the possible relations between Datasets.

In my perspective, a Dataset *is* an abstract thing. It only physically exists in its Distributions. For example, a Dataset may not have Distributions, e.g. if a description of a Dataset is generated before the data is collected (the Dataset of tomorrow’s weather observations) or a description still exists in the Catalog after the data files have been deleted. In my mind, that means a Dataset is an abstract entity.

The description of ADMS http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-adms/, a specification closely related to DCAT, is more explicit about this. It defines  adms:Asset, a subclass of dcat:Dataset, as: “An abstract entity that reflects the intellectual content of the asset and represents those characteristics of the asset that are independent of its physical embodiment.”

Makx.

 

 

 



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