Re: [dxwg] refining the definition of profile in response to the poll (#989)

I don't know what "undefined concepts" are present in that sentence of Tom's. 

> i.e. there is no requirement for conformance to a profile to mean conformance to a profiled specification.

1) What is a "profiled specification"?
2) "no requirement for conformance" begs the question of "what is conformance?" Again, what exactly does one test for? As an example, DCMI Metadata Terms do not include any rules about cardinality. If one creates a profile and adds cardinality, is that conformant? If there is a profile that gives the cardinaltiy of dct:title as 0..1, and another profile using that as a starting point gives the cardinality as 1..1, are these conformant? Really, if we can't say what has to conform we can't require conformance because it isn't meaningful to do so. And this also raises the question of whether conformance is a testable condition (e.g. you can write algorithms that return true or false in terms of conformance) or whether it is conceptual (without a possibility of testing other than human judgment). If it is the latter then we have a question that will not always return the same result, and may be circumstantial. In that case, insisting on conformance doesn't say much.

> Can you cite any other profile that does not require conformance to a specification it claims to profile?

That depends greatly on the definition of conformance, which we don't seem to have. If we had one we could look at profiles and see if they meet our definition. 

> Can you suggest any meaning for the concept of profile if its just a specification, with no specific behavioural characteristics identified ?

Again, some unclear terms here. "just a specification"? What is "just a specification"? Since a profile IS A a type of specification then what does "just a specification" mean in this sense? And what are "behavioural characteristics"?

As if often the case, I wonder which statements refer to profiles and which refer to the instance data that the profile defines.  In some of our discussions I feel like we are mixing those two, which may be some of the confusion. 

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Received on Sunday, 14 July 2019 18:43:32 UTC