Re: Updated Editor's Draft of JSON-LD Syntax

Markus,

I am sorry but... I am not convinced by your proposal. I do not see the real added value of the extra triples you generate, while it is not clear what the role is. From a purely RDF point of view, it is an arbitrary choice of three subjects that you pull from the dataset and declare as <data> but that is not really meaningful when we are talking about a graph and not a tree or a forest. And RDF is a general Graph. If one forgets about the RDF relation of JSON-LS, then again it is misleading to an author to suddenly see a property that has a special, predefined meaning, while all other JSON-LD specific processing predicates are of the "@..." class (and are not used to generate/represent data).

My preferred approach would be very close to the current idiom, just to separate it from the usage "@id" because I find that it currently overloads semantics. While you guys have reduced the number of "@..." predicates whenever the meaning was similar (e.g., "@type") and I agree with that, this case is different; I think this is where a separate, dedicated "@..." is necessary. Something like:

{
  "@context" : { .... },
  "@data" : [
     ....
   ]
}

What this would mean is that, _formally_, the pattern above is the general format of JSON data. That seems to be fairly clear, semantically. Additionally, the JSON-LD syntax would allow for fairly obvious shorthands, namely:

{
  "@context" : { .... },
  "@data" : { "@id" : "http://blabla" ... }
}

which is equivalent to:

{
  "@context" : { .... },
  "@data" : [ { "@id" : "http://blabla" ... } ]
}

and

{
   "@context" : { ... },
   "@id" : "http://blabla",
   ... other statements ...
}

is equivalent to

{
   "@context" : { ... },
   "@data" : {
      "@id" : "http://blabla",
      ... other statements ...
   }
}

Some fall back rules are necessary if the author has

{
   "@context" : { ... },
   "@id" : "http://blabla",
   ... other statements ...
   "@data" [ ... }
}

probably merging the @data section with a new object defined by the rest.

This means that by, again, _formally_ we have a clean definition, we also get the simplicity of today for the usual cases, while covering a missing, albeit necessary, functionality...

My 2 cents...

Ivan

   




On Jan 23, 2012, at 13:36 , Markus Lanthaler wrote:

> Oh OK.. Could you have a look at ISSUE-56 and check if what I proposed there
> would be a viable solution for this idiom?
> 
> https://github.com/json-ld/json-ld.org/issues/56
> 
> IMO that would be a viable (and clean) solution for this.
> 
> 
> --
> Markus Lanthaler
> @markuslanthaler
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org]
>> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 8:03 PM
>> To: Markus Lanthaler
>> Cc: 'Manu Sporny'; 'Linked JSON'
>> Subject: Re: Updated Editor's Draft of JSON-LD Syntax
>> 
>> Markus,
>> 
>> unfortunately, I have a conflicting call...
>> 
>> Ivan
>> 
>> On Jan 23, 2012, at 12:16 , Markus Lanthaler wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Ivan,
>>> 
>>> I agree.. that's an important concept to talk about. We have a
>> telecon
>>> scheduled for tomorrow at 15:00 UTC. Since Manu didn't send the
>> agenda out
>>> yet I would suggest we discuss it tomorrow - if you have time to join
>> the
>>> telecon!?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Markus Lanthaler
>>> @markuslanthaler
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org]
>>>> Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 5:39 PM
>>>> To: Manu Sporny
>>>> Cc: Linked JSON
>>>> Subject: Re: Updated Editor's Draft of JSON-LD Syntax
>>>> 
>>>> Manu,
>>>> 
>>>> I know I sound like a broken record. But the
>>>> 
>>>> {
>>>> "@id" : [
>>>>    { ... }
>>>>    { ... }
>>>>  ]
>>>> }
>>>> 
>>>> idiom is still not defined anywhere and it just pops up from nowhere
>> in
>>>> section A.2. I do not believe that the syntax and semantics in that
>>>> example can be derived from any of the previous sections.
>>>> 
>>>> Ivan


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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