Re: Setting milestones (Re: marathon)

Hi All

I have my own reasons to like the prospect of an N3-Lite. For my use-cases a subset of N3 would be quite attractive, probably not as a spec on its own right but as an implementation: a N3 interpreter that has an option only to allow N3-Lite.

In my use-cases, processing Linked Data Notifications and executing updates on Solid pods, N3 is not used as a patch algorithm but defines business rules that can require human input/evaluation. The N3 rules can be written by the maintainer of a Solid pod, but also published by universities, research groups and publishers. In some way I need a way to limit what kind of rules can be executed against a local Solid Pod. N3-Lite covers very well what I had in mind.

N3-Lite would make the authoring of rules easier, hopefully execution of arbitrary side-effects limited (depending on the built-ins that will be supported), but it also pragmatically creates a much broader range of possible implementations.

I hope I'm not rocking this boat..

Patrick

________________________________
From: Miel Vander Sande <miel.vandersande@meemoo.be>
Sent: 05 April 2022 09:41
To: Gregg Kellogg <gregg@greggkellogg.net>
Cc: Jos De Roo <josderoo@gmail.com>; Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine@w3.org>; public-n3-dev@w3.org <public-n3-dev@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Setting milestones (Re: marathon)

@Gregg: If they could have, they would have I presume. The background is here: https://github.com/solid/specification/issues/85<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fsolid%2Fspecification%2Fissues%2F85&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362556409%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=IXXfjgoNX2Hc%2B%2BBL6igGkSlBrRJrCgCYm6j31lxeF%2BM%3D&reserved=0>

I think PA is on to something though. Better to publish a subset soon than nothing at all. I don't think its a big issue that N3Lite doesn't cover the Solid use case. Having no semantics clearly didn't stop them from adopting it. But if the scope of N3Lite could be widened without introducing delays, go for it.

+1 for obliterating N3Lite after the N3 specification is released :) Perhaps N3 1.0  and N3 1.1 are more suitable

Best,

Miel



Op ma 4 apr. 2022 om 23:27 schreef Gregg Kellogg <gregg@greggkellogg.net<mailto:gregg@greggkellogg.net>>:
This use case might be better served by the Linked Data Patch Format [1] (wink wink PA), which is more specifically intended for this, and doesn’t require the invention of new semantics for something like solid:where/insert/delete.

Gregg Kellogg
gregg@greggkellogg.net<mailto:gregg@greggkellogg.net>

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/ldpatch/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FTR%2Fldpatch%2F&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362566402%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=ljfoBUz%2FPfOU3t4m7uP%2BViN2UUhMTH12lxz5bnBuFN0%3D&reserved=0>

On Apr 4, 2022, at 1:53 PM, Jos De Roo <josderoo@gmail.com<mailto:josderoo@gmail.com>> wrote:

There is a crucial piece of N3 for the specification of the Solid Protocol
more specifically at https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol#writing-resources<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsolidproject.org%2FTR%2Fprotocol%23writing-resources&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362571399%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=nr0cjyOZ4WemrHA3M3ELqQL5P6MaBdpbKXhH1D4gJWI%3D&reserved=0>

It uses cited formulae with quickvars (?x), so it is beyond N3-Lite
but it actually is an excellent and practical use case.

That said, EYE suffers to roundtrip (with --pass) the example in
https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol#writing-resources<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsolidproject.org%2FTR%2Fprotocol%23writing-resources&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362576397%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Pt9v9qn7GusezRzXm1%2FQHCuYVTYpz6jmWzOrPtiij9I%3D&reserved=0>
The n3p code at
https://github.com/josd/n3p/blob/33dde4db84c48467cd9e188744e8f34672675c7e/examples/patch.n3p<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjosd%2Fn3p%2Fblob%2F33dde4db84c48467cd9e188744e8f34672675c7e%2Fexamples%2Fpatch.n3p&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362591399%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=%2Ft74b2zVmjulOyTrxlI1SSLjw2Ya9Q5tDN0aZtH%2BmS8%3D&reserved=0>
roundtrips fine at
https://github.com/josd/n3p/blob/33dde4db84c48467cd9e188744e8f34672675c7e/result.n3p#L103<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjosd%2Fn3p%2Fblob%2F33dde4db84c48467cd9e188744e8f34672675c7e%2Fresult.n3p%23L103&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362596391%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=YtKA4bxdy33pKhHKqZmjaFZlc17fyJUtrSC216tHT9w%3D&reserved=0>

jos

-- https://josd.github.io
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjosd.github.io%2F&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362606385%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=m3mF9J4t3nHw6pC7bXApOowoUVMM0XIVlqPnfLlw0Lo%3D&reserved=0>


On Mon, Apr 4, 2022 at 12:43 PM Pierre-Antoine Champin <pierre-antoine@w3.org<mailto:pierre-antoine@w3.org>> wrote:


On 04/04/2022 09:40, Miel Vander Sande wrote:
Hi Jos, all

Thanks for running this marathon; I think we all very much appreciate EYE and the updates that it got because of this.
+42 :-)
I'm clearly one of the 33 dormant members of this group, mainly because I'm really unqualified to partake in the discussions (I see N3 as a tool, unwary of the insides), but may I ask:
after 42 months, is there a group report in sight? Is there a milestone planned?

That's a fair question, and we acknowledged during the call last week that, unfortunately, we are not there yet. Defining a clean definition of N3's semantics is getting in the way, and unfortunately eating a lot of our bandwidth. I probably have my share of responsibility in that latter point, and I apologize for it.

Here is an idea that is maybe silly, but maybe can help us make progress : we could focus, for a while, on a strict subset of the N3 language (coined e.g. N3-Lite), and try to get a self-sufficient CG report on that subset. Then we could try to grow this subset (possibly in several incremental steps) until we cover N3 entirely.

The subset I have in mind is the following (but that's open for discussion):

- quoted graphs are disallowed, expect as the head or body of rules
- rules are not encoded as triples, but handled at their own level
- quickvars (?x) are only allowed in rules
- no explicit quantification

I think that defining the semantics of this subset should be relatively easy (compared to full N3), and that it could be done in such a way that all existing N3 implementation already comply with the semantics.  We would therefore have a first level of interoperabilty formally specified.

Focusing on N3-lite, we could also come back to our work on builtins (although the most complex ones, such as log:semantics, log:includes, or log:forAll would not be part of N3-lite).

I know that this is reminiscent of the different profiles of OWL, which some people in this group don't quite like. Maybe to avoid this issue could we decide that N3-Lite needs to disappear once N3 "full" is properly specified. In any case, I think that N3-Lite could be a useful stepping stone.

And is there anything non-expert community members can do to help?

Hopefully, the discussions on N3-Lite will be more accessible, and allow for a wider group to engage. At least, that's one of the goal of this proposal.

  pa

Best,

Miel

Op ma 4 apr. 2022 om 02:01 schreef Jos De Roo <josderoo@gmail.com<mailto:josderoo@gmail.com>>:
Hi all,

This group started about 42 months ago https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-n3-dev/2018Nov/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.w3.org%2FArchives%2FPublic%2Fpublic-n3-dev%2F2018Nov%2F&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362611385%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=IObOqCKhOi1nDgcHnE8Uw10aoVHbPJ879qxJiuTPztM%3D&reserved=0>
and for me it really feels like a marathon coming to an end.
During this past 42 months we had lengthy discussions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A3HAUhjaVnnJ6yVbFAvIBRJQjUY9aFlQ2_bGxkD0mnE/edit<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fdocument%2Fd%2F1A3HAUhjaVnnJ6yVbFAvIBRJQjUY9aFlQ2_bGxkD0mnE%2Fedit&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362616379%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=oWuIRMDCMy9KaedwefUgwkL%2BLbP0AR29PpuWv0TWwbM%3D&reserved=0>
and as a result for the eye reasoner there were 244 releases https://github..com/josd/eye/blob/master/RELEASE<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjosd%2Feye%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2FRELEASE&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362626379%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=mHzYkauZwAy7iJOzqsPGsOqCojvaA1kjYv8kcJfebvw%3D&reserved=0>

For me what really remains is n3p which is the eye intermediate p-code and from now on
I will focus on https://github.com/josd/n3p<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjosd%2Fn3p&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362631370%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=x0ygqfFQpBBnBOp9vapFpIu6PknVImrstXoMueZMXjQ%3D&reserved=0> as a https://knows.idlab.ugent.be/team/ member
and stay quiet in this N3 community group like most of the other 33 members..

Thanks and kind regards,
Jos

-- https://josd.github.io<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjosd.github.io%2F&data=04%7C01%7CPatrick.Hochstenbach%40ugent.be%7C9e8c462e2a774982553f08da16d80568%7Cd7811cdeecef496c8f91a1786241b99c%7C1%7C0%7C637847416362641371%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=xRALiAcoqEiutuLLfez1y%2B7PAoW4FBtS%2BhWsTJYw%2Fi4%3D&reserved=0>