Re: [dxwg] property profileOfTransitive

I agree with @rob-metalinkage that the wording of the document needs to explain that the profile is abstracted from its parts. I don't see that in the current version of the document, and the diagrams do not make that clear to me. Basically, everyone who reads the document needs to come away with this concept, even if they are unaware of the parallel model in DCAT.

@makxdekkers "But: as soon as they want their profile to play in the LD world, they will read the specification of the Profile Ontology and understand what the ProfOnt classes mean..." You are much more optimistic than I am. As is often said, the great thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. That, and the fact that there is no enforcement. However, the key thing here is that the profiles ontology document must be very clear if it is to be used widely. Then users will choose to use it or not, but hopefully those who choose will be using it correctly.

@nicholascar said: _But when they come to formally define things and perhaps when their profile becomes a bit more complex and powerful (e.g. wanting to create a schematron file from the PDF and use the PDF for Guidance, the schematron for Validation) then they abstract the notion of the Profile away from the 'physical' document._ This brings up an essential question of _authority_ that some of us are very familiar with from the library world. When there is a SHACL document and a ShEx document and a Schematron document and they either conflict or have minor differences, which is the authoritative statement of the profile? When there is a written/verbal document (like DCAT-AP.pdf) and it has aspects that cannot be expressed in SHACL ("mandatory if applicable") which is the authoritative statement? This probably arises less in DCAT because the distributions are all distributions from "a" dataset, meaning that there is probably a parent physical file somewhere (usually) that one can go back to. In the profiles case, it isn't clear if there is an authoritative parent, and the model is much more complex because the parts are not all distributions of the same thing. (I'm assuming that one is not required to have a written document as the foundation for a profile, but any set of artifacts makes a profile.) In fact, with profiles it is much more complex, and reminds me of some library cases. For example, in bibliographic description when you have a translation you want to know what version of the text was the basis for the translation, or if a translation is a translation of another translation. With profiles, if you have SHACL and ShEx validation documents, were they developed independently or was one derived from the other (there are translation programs between them). Without a parent or an anchor for all of the artifacts that make up the totality of the profile you have a lot of uncertainty. Also, you may need more information about the relationship between artifacts. How much this matters depends on the individual case. In fairly coordinated environments this may not have an affect. In the wild web world, like the one that schema.org operates in, usage of artifacts could be error-prone if their exact nature in relation to the content of other artifacts is not clear. That's not an argument against the model, but a caution for developers. Nor is this an argument to create a more complex model (which the library world does, and it's hellish-ly complex). But I think it is important to acknowledge that we are aware of these complexities, and to state a position in relation to them.





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Received on Monday, 5 November 2018 14:06:28 UTC