Using Hydra for Data Model Genration and Validation

Dear hydra people,

I've discovered this project a few days ago and found it very interesting,
since its somewhat similar to a project I'm doing right now ... just more
oriented into API modeling and not data model development.

To sum it up shortly: I was using JSON Schema (I've extended it to be
object oriented) to develop a data model for Semantic MediaWiki. The JSON
Schema Model is used to auto generate the data model, forms, validation and
documentation. This worked for me just fine. The Semantic URI's, Attributes
etc. are created through Semantic MediaWiki. If a Triplestore is attached I
can query the datasets entered via SPARQL, otherwise via the MediaWiki API.

If you want to take a closer look, here's a presentation:
http://fannon.de/p/mobo-intro/#/

In fact, I've thought about using OWL or JSON-LD first, but discarded this
approach because of some problems, which I would like to discuss here. Some
of this might be very controversial.


   - It seems to me that it is hard to do "hard validation" and define
   "hard facts", mainly due to the open world assumption behind the semantic
   web philosophy.
   - Since I want to generate Forms I want to clearly define how data
   should be entered and have hard restrictions that can work real-time on the
   front-end. (Reasoning is too slow for that)
   - For model development one of the main features that really saved me a
   lot of work is object-oriented inheritance. This is a very easy and well
   understood concept and enables the reuse of already existing parts while
   always maintaining the ability to overwrite the results. Is something like
   that possible with JSON-LD too?
   - I really like to have the most basic technology as the foundation. So
   I'm using the basic JSON file format and on top of that JSON Schema. My
   problem with the OWL was that it was already a complex system (and
   worldview!) to begin with and to add some basic features like hard
   validation you had to add yet another complex system on top of that - just
   to achive simple things like form generation!
   - In order to make this project as user friendly as possible to new
   people it is VERY important to have a low entry barrier. JSON Schema is
   simple enough to learn and understand in a few hours. No need to dive into
   the (rather complex) Semantic Web Theory and Practice.

But it looks to me that Hydra adresses a few ob those objections.

I really love the vision behind the Semantic Web and would like to leverage
the tools behind it. JSON-LD seems to be a good step into making this more
easy. The biggest advantage may be that it is W3C Standardized and I'm
using technology which can potentially have a very large toolset and
support through the community.

So I'm thinking about if it would work to use JSON-LD / Hydra / ??? to make
my project (or the bigger idea behind it) work.

I hope that this mail is not too confusing, since there are many subjects
in it and I haven't thought everything completely through for sure. Thanks
for reading it!


*Short introduction about me: I'm currently a empoyee and student at the
University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg. Currently I'm working on the
subject around "Knowledge Management with Semantic Web Technologies". *

Kind regards,
Simon Heimler