Re: ISSUE-7 (whyAccessUrl): Drop dcat:accessUrl, use the URI of the dcat:Download resource instead [DCAT]

On Tue 14 Feb 2012 04:57:11 PM UTC, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> On 10 Feb 2012, at 14:07, Sarven Capadisli wrote:
>> In any case, I think it is important to distinguish the following cases for the record:
>>
>> a) Data accessible only by interacting with the web application e.g., it may require a login, sessions, or XHR.
>> b) Direct accessible links i.e., data can be retrieved independently with an HTTP request.
>>
>> For (a), I think we are slightly out of luck. Since the dcat:Distribution class caters to any distribution type (including the HTML page for the downloads), the following would satisfy the very last stop to access the data:
>>
>> ex:dataset1
>>     a dcat:Dataset ;
>>     dcat:distribution<http://example.gov/downloads/>  .
>
> A common use case is that someone is looking for data on a certain topic in CSV or Excel format, and they don't mind if they have to click through a download page or form to get to the data. Many catalogs are organised to support this use case.
>
> data.gov.uk example:
> http://data.gov.uk/dataset/spotlightonspend-transactions-download
>
> The catalog knows that this is in CSV format, but you actually have to do several clicks before you get to the actual data (which is a zipfile with a CSV inside). So the URL in the catalog (http://www.spotlightonspend.org.uk/datadownload.aspx) is *not* in CSV format, but the dataset *is* distributed in CSV format.
>
> I think it's important that DCAT can represent this situation, including the fact that CSV is available.
>
> The current design meets that requirement; with your proposal it no longer works.
>
> Best,
> Richard

If the use cases revolve around human intervention, then I suppose 
anything goes. But, you are right, it is better to have that 
information on the format in such cases, than not.

-Sarven

Received on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 14:38:36 UTC