Re: Dataset URIs and metadata.

Sebastian,

On 7/22/2011 11:42 AM, Sebastian Schaffert wrote:
> Am 22.07.2011 um 17:19 schrieb Michael Hausenblas:
>
>>> So, perhaps one day it will be a standard, but not today.
>>
>> Good catch! Did you join the Pedantic Web [1] group, yet? We need more people like you.
> I think the underlying point is here that a standard that is not widely adopted can claim to be a standard as much as it wants, but it simply isn't. ;-)
>
> We need pragmatic solutions ... ;-)
>

Perhaps someone's point but mine was the lesser "correct citation" one. 
I look up references when given, not simply to check them but to see 
what else I can learn at the reference. Sometimes I learn that the 
reference has little or nothing to do with the point in question. But I 
am still learning something.

On "pragmatic solutions..." I can only offer a comment that is often 
made about standards:

http://xkcd.com/927/

;-)

I don't have the answer but do think we need to frame the problem in 
terms of self-introspective change tracking.

That is change tracking that documents the semantics of both data and 
structure, of information structures, including the change tracking 
system itself.

I say that because the history of information is one of change, which 
was less troublesome or perhaps less visible, when the agents of change 
(that would be us) were also the agents who consume the changes. Not 
perfect but with enough effort, a person can trace the changes in 
semantics (in both data and structure) to extract information they need.

We remain the agents of change, just glance over the literature on 
change tracking in DB schemas as an example, yet we want our benighted 
servants to track changes in semantics of both structure and data, that 
we *did not record.* That would be a good trick if we could do it. To be 
fair, we have trouble where we have failed to document semantics.

Would it be a "pragmatic solution" to look for principles that solutions 
could follow in documenting the semantics of both data and structure? So 
that other "pragmatic solutions" could re-use the previous work?

Hope you are at the start of a great week!

Patrick



-- 

Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau

Received on Monday, 25 July 2011 12:58:28 UTC