Review of FPWD Profiles Ontology

Dear all,

I just finished reviewing the PROF specification (https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/profilesont/, 8 Nov 2018). I include below my comments: 

I think it is quite clear that the vocabulary still includes unstable terms, and that there are parts of the conceptual schema which are yet to be consolidated. However, I don't think this should prevent the publication of the specification. On the contrary, this may trigger useful feedback on the issues under discussion. 

So, this is a +1 from me.

Said that, there are some editorial issues (listed at the end of this mail) that, IMHO, may be worth fixing before going out. At least for some of them I'll create the relevant PRs.

Coming back to the non-editorial issues, and considering we don't have much time left, it would be probably useful to consider the approach adopted for the Spatial Data on the Web BPs, and mentioned by Jeremy Tandy during the last F2F, i.e., scheduling a new release every 3-4 weeks, each addressing a small set of specific issues. This way, the discussion could be more focussed and effective.

E.g., for the next release, the plan could be to decide whether prof:BaseSpecification and prof:token should be in or out. And maybe a couple of other issues might be added.

Of course, this does not prevent any decision from being revisited in a later stage.

Thanks, and congratulations to the editors for the work done!

Andrea

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0. The document on GH is said to be a "W3C First Public Working Draft". This needs to be changed: all documents on GH are of type "W3C Editor's Draft" (see, e.g., https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/dcat/). The change of type into FPWD will be done when the document is moved to TR space. BTW, also the Profile Guidance and  Content Negotiation by Profile documents have the same problem.

1. Implementation report: Better move it to the DXWG wiki space, and possibly link to the current GH repo there.

2. [PROF-GUIDE] & [PROF-CONNEG]: The links point to TR space, but the documents are not (yet) there. 

3. "Dublin Core metadata vocabulary [DCAP]": Replace with "Dublin Core Application Profiles guidelines (DCAP) [DCAP]"

4. Inconsistent namespace prefix used for DCMI Terms (sometimes dcterms: , sometimes dct:). BTW, I would suggest we use consistent prefixes across all DXWG specs for clarity's sake. As far as DCMI Terms is concerned, and looking at the current statistics in our documents, I have the impression that dct: wins.

5. Section 1.1 says:

[[
1.1 Compliance with this Document

For the purpose of compliance, the normative sections of this document are Section 1.1, Section 1.2, Section 5,Section 6 & Section 7
]]

- The pointer to Section 1.1 looks recursive: is this intentional?
- Section 7 starts by saying it is not normative (which is in conflict with what said in Section 1.1)

6. Section 3 starts with:

[[
Until this ontology, there was no formal W3C method for describing the objects (Internet resources) related to profiles.
]]

- This statement is quite generic, and it may be argued that it is not accurate. E.g., with the current vocabularies I can specify who is the publisher / author of a profile, to which standard / specification a profile conforms to. Also, I don't understand what "W3C method" should mean: the issue is whether a method exists or not, we are not creating one to fill a gap in W3C specs
- I suggest replacing "the objects (Internet resources)" with "the resources"

7. Section 6.3:

[[
This may not be a useful class: documents of any specification can be regarded as a trivial profile, so applications only need to be concerned with Profile conformance
]]

This should be better placed into an .ednote. A vocabulary term associated with a statement saying "This may not be a useful class" should not be included in the vocabulary.

8. Section 9.2 (Alignment with ADMS): This section has no content. The relevant issue could be included: https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues/240


9. It may be worth adding also a section about VOAF, whose relationships/alignment with PROF has been discussed. Also here, the relevant issue can be included: https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues/235


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Andrea Perego, Ph.D.
Scientific / Technical Project Officer
European Commission DG JRC
Directorate B - Growth and Innovation
Unit B6 - Digital Economy
Via E. Fermi, 2749 - TP 262
21027 Ispra VA, Italy

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/


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The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may
not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official
position of the European Commission.

Received on Tuesday, 13 November 2018 08:48:27 UTC