Re: How to link to Companies House (UK) data?

On 18/01/2017 18:16, Stuart Williams wrote:
>> A property 
>> <http://environment.data.gov.uk/def/bathing-water/appointedSewerageUndertaker> 
>> has been defined specifically for this purpose. I understand that one 
>> reason for doing so is that there is a specific role played by this 
>> company - that of being the appointed sewerage undertaker - and there 
>> may be other companies, with different roles associated with this 
>> particular piece of bathing water. My situation is slightly different 
>> in that for each instance of my:Thing, there can be either zero or 
>> one registrations with Companies House, and that registration is of 
>> the legal form of that instance of my:Thing. So, I am wondering if I 
>> can simply have:
>>
>>     my:instanceOfThing chterms:companyProfile
>>     <http://business.data.gov.uk/companies/profile/99999999>. [1]
>>
> Firstly I'm having trouble parsing "...and that registration is of the 
> legal form of that instance of my:Thing".
I can understand why! Sorry for writing such rubbish! I'll have another 
go. Each instance of my:Thing is an organization. More precisely:

    my:Thing rdfs:subClassOf <http://www.w3.org/ns/org#OrganizationalUnit> .

(Aside: I don't know why it is an OrganizationalUnit, rather than an 
Organization. I will check this with the original author.)
And some of those organizations are /themselves/ also registered with 
Companies House. So, the slight difference that I wanted (but failed in 
my unparsable sentence!) to point out is that it is the my:Thing 
/itself/ that may be registered with CH - as opposed to the Bathing 
Waters example, where the registered company provides a service to the 
Bathing Waters.
>
> Secondly, I'd like to understand whether you are wanting to reference 
> a "company registration" or a "company". If a "company", then for a UK 
> company <http://business.data.gov.uk/id/company/99999999> is the URI 
> to use, or more globally as others have suggested you could use an 
> OpenCorporates URI. If it's a "company registration" (as in a formal 
> legal thing) then while the company profile contains some arguably 
> interesting information about the company and is clearly evidence of a 
> registration having occurred - I'm not sure that I could hand-on-heart 
> say that the profile serves as the "registration". I guess that in 
> some respect a registration is an event, a register contains 
> information that records the occurrence of such events and the profile 
> is a document that contains some information derived from that record 
> of registration.
>
> So in large part, what the right thing to do is depends on what 
> 'claim' you want your RDF statement to make. If you can state that 
> clearly I/we might be able to give better help.
The truth is that I am feeling my way here. One of the things that I 
like (in the sense that it is good for me, rather than it necessarily 
being pleasurable!) about attempting to link into existing LOD is that I 
am forced to consider the thinking that other people have done on a 
subject - e.g. the separation of CompanyProfile and CompanyRegistration. 
All I knew at the outset was that there was an opportunity to link the 
dataset I'm working on (based on CSV data published by Co-ops UK, about 
all co-operatives in the UK) with another dataset - that of Companies 
House. My work is to research the use of LOD, exploring how it might be 
used in the Solidarity Economy, and to be able to demonstrate an 
implementation to others. So, my requirement is just to provide 'a link' 
to the Companies House data. With your help, I now see that there is a 
choice between linking to the company profile, and the company 
registration. I also now know that given a link to either of these, 
there are existing links in the CH data to the other.
>
>> BUT ... I see in the comment for 
>> http://business.data.gov.uk/companies/def/terms/companyProfile:
>>
>>     "An open-domained, object valued property used to associate parts
>>     of a CompanyProfile (AccountsSchedule, ReturnsSchedule,
>>     Mortgages, LimitedPartnerships, PreviousNames) with the profile
>>     of which they are a part. It is also used to associate a
>>     RegisteredComany with its CompanyProfile."
>>
>> On the one hand, it is open-domained, which I assume means that 
>> nothing can be inferred about the type of my:instanceOfThing from it 
>> being used in the triple [1], which is good. 
>
> Yes... leaving the domain open makes the property available for reuse 
> with any subject.
>
>> On the other hand, the comment mentions only that it is used to 
>> associate the parts of the profile (including RegisteredCompany) with 
>> the profile of which they are part. That is exactly how it is used in 
>> the bathing waters example, but not in the triple [1]. Of course, the 
>> comment does not say that it is used /only/ in that way, so maybe I 
>> should go ahead an use it as in [1]. Would I be misusing the property 
>> if I did that, or should I define a new property with the domain 
>> my:Thing to provide links to the Companies House profile?
> I suspect opinions will vary, but the intention was that the property 
> be left open for reuse. The uses given were illustrative rather than a 
> constraint. That could possibly make clearer in the narrative.
Understood.
>>
>> Incidentally, I was curious to see the definition of this 
>> <http://environment.data.gov.uk/def/bathing-water/appointedSewerageUndertaker>, 
>> but I can't find it in 
>> http://environment.data.gov.uk/sources/def/bathing-water.ttl
>
> That's a pity... maybe the update version hasn't made it out there. 
> Here are the lines you are missing:
details cut - thank you for providing them
>
>> I am also considering the using the rov:hasRegisteredOrganization 
>> (see https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-regorg/#ref_rov_hasRegOrg) property 
>> like this:
>>
>>     my:instanceOfThing rov:hasRegisteredOrganization
>>     <http://business.data.gov.uk/id/company/99999999> .
>>
>> As I understand it this would have the side effect of asserting that 
>> my:instanceOfThing is a dcterms:Agent, but that should be OK as the 
>> description of dcterms:Agent looks 'harmless': " A resource that acts 
>> or has the power to act. Examples of Agent include person, 
>> organization, and software agent." 
> Yes it would have that side effect. Personally it's an implication 
> that I'd perhaps prefer to avoid (that my:instanceOfThing is an 
> instance of dcterms:Agent) - I've tend to use Agent to cover 
> Person/Organisation like things (more like legal person I suppose) - 
> things that you could take to court. However, I'd acknowledge the 
> inclusion of "software agent" which is something that might be hard to 
> set before a judge - modulo driver-less cars :-).
That helps to clarify things. Looking at the definition 
(https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-regorg/#ref_rov_hasRegOrg) of 
rov:hasRegisteredOrganization:

    "The has registered organization relationship can be used to link
    any|dcterms:Agent|(equivalent class|foaf:Agent|) to a Registered
    Organization that in some way acts as a registered legal entity for it."

I feel reasonably comfortable with the side effect. Perhaps this 
definition points to the possibility of linking the driver-less car to 
the legal entity that can be taken to court when the car breaks the law :-)

Many thanks for your help.

-- 
Matt Wallis
Institute for Solidarity Economics
http://www.solidarityeconomics.org