Re: DCAT Last Call issues: additional rules for skos:Concept

On 26 Mar 2013, at 15:27, "Makx Dekkers" <makx@makxdekkers.com> wrote:
> First of all, you seem to imply that there will only be one concept
> scheme ("the entire concept scheme" in singular) in use for the
> catalogue. I could have datasets that satisfy the requirement that all
> themes are part of a theme taxonomy, but those might be from more than
> one concept scheme. Is that not allowed?

There is no rule that forbids that.

> Secondly, discovering "the entire concept scheme" is not possible from
> looking only at the themes. Not all the concepts in the concept scheme
> may be used. You can only find out which concept schemes are actually
> used for the themes. If you also require that the concept scheme is
> specified as themeTaxonomy it gets easier but you still have to go to
> the concept scheme URI to find the entire concept scheme (the complete
> collection of concepts in the scheme).

You've snipped my reference to the part of the spec that discusses these questions.

> But most of all, I don't understand why "discovering the entire concept
> scheme" is a requirement. Are you saying that an application that uses
> DCAT without being able to find out the concept scheme(s) used is in
> some sense not useful?

It is not a requirement. That's why dcat:theme is optional.

> Please note that I am not saying that it is not useful to have theme
> taxonomies and themes specified. I am actually looking into making them
> mandatory for the Application Profile we are working on, but I just like
> to know why those rules are necessary for the base specification. 

They are not necessary. But they are beneficial for the use case of filtering a DCAT-enabled catalog by theme. This is a feature that's supported in the majority of government data catalogs, and DCAT is designed to support exactly that set of features.

Best,
Richard



> 
> Makx. 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 26 March 2013 15:43:49 UTC