Re: [dxwg] A profile must be packaged as a self-contained artefact

I begin to wonder if we are using the same terms with the same meanings. First, DCAT-AP, by which I refer to a PDF (that is darned hard to get to on the eu site so I've socked away my own copy which says it is: SC118DI07171, DCAT Application Profile for data portals in Europe, Version 1.1). From what I can tell it lists all of the terms that are included in the application profile, from a variety of namespaces, including DCAT (which itself lists terms from DCT and others). The RDF file (which I haven't examined in full) seems to also contain all of the classes and properties from DCAT-AP. This is what I would call "flat" in that the classes and properties have been copied to the DCAT-AP; there is no "import" function (e.g. OWL imports).  Next, "import" to me means "just in time" inclusion of properties and classes during run-time, which does not seem to be how DCAT-AP works. So I would call DCAT-AP "flat" in that it is a single document or RDF vocabulary that is complete as written and does not require examining  or importing from another source.

I suspect that what you are calling "import" I am seeing as "reuse". 

What seems key here is "Nothing stopping dcat-ap-it being acaikable (available) as a flattened graph containing all the dcat and dcterms axioms". This may be the crux of the matter, and it is somewhat analogous to some things that we struggled with in the SHACL/shapes working group - to what extent one can expect that applications access and enforce rules ( domains, ranges) from the parent vocabulary. That I see as an interesting question for profiles (and other reuses). In the SHACL/shapes work it was decided to ignore any axioms not present in the actual graph being validated (included sub/super relationships). That said, I do believe this is a validation question as much or more than it is a profile question, and I'm not sure that it is something we can tackle in terms of providing guidance. It seems to be a general issue around "mix'n'match" vocabularies and beyond our scope. If there are authoritative discussions of this in W3C documentation we can refer to it (without trying to solve it).

That said, I may have mis-understood how DCAP-AP works, and if so I would appreciate pointers to what I have missed. 

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Received on Sunday, 24 June 2018 00:58:20 UTC