Re: [dxwg] Create a use case and requirement for "central" authoritative validation rules (#597)

@nicholascar I don't think you understand what we mean by "authoritative" - it comes out of library jargon, so maybe we haven't been clear. Out of any number of files that either describe, support or implement a profile (or anything else, for that matter) the authoritative one is the one whose content is the final word. It's THE standard that you go by. Let's say you have a profile, and it has a document which is authoritative (PDF, Word, XML, SHACL, ShEx, whatever). Then you create another file that also attempts to say what is in the authoritative file, let's say a SHACL file based on an authoritative PDF file. The rules encoded in the SHACL file are intended to be faithful renditions of the authoritative document. However, if there are questions about the content of the SHACL file you return to the authoritative document to determine what is correct. If there are differences, the meaning in the authoritative document is the "true" one. All of the supporting files to the profile are judged against the authoritative file. See also my response to Peter in [email](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-dxwg-wg/2019Jan/0653.html) which explains why this would imply the need for intra-resource relationships - relationships between profile resources and the authoritative resource, and potentially relationships between the non-authoritative resources and each other when they have been derived in that way.

The specification role is not sufficient, because there can be multiple specifications; nothing about being a specification indicates the ONE authoritative source of information. This is also true for the role of full constraints. As for your "book with one title" - OMG, there is so much to say about the relationship between translations, but your analogy here does not hold; translations are \= original texts, and are not considered authoritative - as with going from a written, authoritative standard to something like SHACL or ShEx, there are always some minor or major differences from the original, which is why an authoritative version is so important.

I guess the easiest way to describe it is: among all of the resources in a profile graph, one must be the standard by which all others are judged so that there is a basis for quality control. Does that make sense?

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Received on Thursday, 31 January 2019 21:42:59 UTC