Re: [dxwg] prof:inheritedFrom needs more convincing case and/or example (#642)

@smrgeoinfo I like this way of expressing the relationship, although I suspect that conceptually "requires" might be considered too strong to some people. The definition of the dct term, though, includes support materials, and I believe this comes from the learning / teaching community and could include things like teachers' manuals.[1] Therefore, any kind of strong dependency would fit, and the mere fact of including files as resources of a profile should mean that they have implicit importance for the functioning of the profile. Given that "prof:inheritedFrom" has no axioms associated with it, but that is left to the implementation, it is no more precise than "dct:requires / dct:isRequiredBy". Having it be a role would avoid the implication that the "inheritance" is an O-O class relationship. Then if someone's application did require a specific type of requirement or dependency, that could be expressed with a role. IMO, having "prof:inheritedFrom" without any clear definition of what that means is just a likely source of confusion. At least with dct:isRequiredBy the definition [1] is pretty clear, while the definition of prof:inheritedFrom in circular and doesn't give a clue as to what inheritance means in the context because it doesn't define or given examples of inheritance (and it uses the word "inheritance" to define "inheritance").[2] Even worse, I don't think it accurately says what I think it means - because it can be inheritance from more than one base specification.

[1] "A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence."
[2] "A Profile's Resource Descriptor has been inherited from a base specification"

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Received on Thursday, 7 February 2019 04:35:22 UTC