RE: Profiles in Linked Data

Kingsley,

On Monday, May 11, 2015 9:00 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:

> We have to be careful here. RDF Language sentences/statements have a
> defined syntax as per RDF Abstract Syntax i.e., 3-tuples organized in subject,
> predicate, object based structure. RDF Shapes (as far as I know) has nothing to
> do with the subject, predicate, object structural syntax of an RDF
> statement/sentence. Basically, it's supposed to provide a mechanism for
> constraining the entity type (class instances) of RDF statement's subject and
> object, when creating RDF statements/sentences in documents. Think of this as
> having more to do with what's regarded as data-entry validation and control, in
> other RDBMS quarters.

The charter of the data shapes WG [1] says that "the product of the RDF Data Shapes WG will enable the definition of graph topologies for interface specification, code development, and data verification", so it's not _only_ about validation etc. My understanding is that it's somewhat similar to XML schema and thus is essentially a description of the graph structure. As such, it can of course be used for validation, but that is only one purpose.

> The function of the "profile" I believe you (and others that support this) are
> seeking has more to do with enabling clients and servers (that don't necessarily
> understand or care about RDF's implicit semantics) exchange hints about the
> nature of RDF document content (e.g., does it conform to Linked Data
> principles re. entity naming [denotation + connotation] ).

No, my use of "profile" is really a "shape" in the sense of the data shapes wg. Some of their motivations are what I'm envisioning, too, e.g.

* Developers of each data-consuming application could define the shapes their software needs to find in each feed, in order to work properly, with optional elements it can use to work better.
* Developers of data-providing systems can read the shape definitions (and possibly related RDF Vocabulary definitions) to learn what they need to provide

> Cut long story short, a "profile" hint is about the nature of the RDF content (in
> regards to entity names and name interpretation), not its shape (which is
> defined by RDF syntax).

OK, I stand corrected: My question is: How can clients and servers negotiate shape information?

Best,

Lars

Received on Tuesday, 12 May 2015 12:18:54 UTC