Re: Proposal for the Direct Mapping

Eric, Alexandre,

Do you agree with this proposal?

Juan Sequeda
+1-575-SEQ-UEDA
www.juansequeda.com


On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Marcelo Arenas
<marcelo.arenas1@gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marcelo
>
> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:35 PM, ashok malhotra
> <ashok.malhotra@oracle.com> wrote:
> > Eric, Marcelo, Alexandre:
> > Are you agreeable to this proposal:  Normative text in English.
> > Denotational Semantics and Rules as non-normative appendices.
> > All the best, Ashok
> > On 7/26/2011 11:46 AM, Juan Sequeda wrote:
> >
> > Richard,
> > This is pretty scary... I was working on something exactly the same right
> > now!!!
> > I've read the R2RML spec several times and I really like the way it is
> done
> > (I have some comments, but that will go later), specially the way how
> > everything is defined in plain english. So I was going to propose to have
> > the english as the normative and move the formalism to appendix. This way
> we
> > can all be happy. Anyways, you beat me to the proposal :P
> > anyways...
> > +1
> >
> > Juan Sequeda
> > +1-575-SEQ-UEDA
> > www.juansequeda.com
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> The Direct Mapping document is stuck because we have a stalemate between
> >> the editors. With Last Call approaching, we need *some* way of breaking
> the
> >> stalemate. So here's a proposal. This is a possible new outline for the
> >> document, along with assignments of separate sections to separate
> editors.
> >>
> >>
> >>    1. Introduction
> >>       - What is this?
> >>       - How does it relate to R2RML
> >>       - Target audience, assumed level of knowledge
> >>       - RDF terms and SQL/relational terms are used as defined in
> >>         documents XXX and YYY
> >>
> >>    2. Example (Informative)
> >>       - A simple two-table example
> >>       - Quick explanation of foreign key handling
> >>       - Quick explanation of tables w/o PKs
> >>
> >>    3. The Direct Mapping [in Plain English]
> >>       - “The Direct Graph of a database is the union of the Table Graphs
> >>          of all tables in the database.”
> >>       - “The Table Graph of a table is the union of the Row Graphs...”
> >>       - “The Row Graph of a row is ...”
> >>       - ...
> >>
> >>    A. Appendix: Formalisms (Informative)
> >>       - should be crisp, short, precise, with only minimum explanation
> >>         and examples
> >>       A.1 Datalog Rules
> >>       A.2 Denotational Semantics
> >>       A.3 Set-Style Direct Mapping
> >>
> >>    B. Acknowledgements (Informative)
> >>
> >>    C. References
> >>
> >>
> >> I see Juan and Marcelo editing A.1.
> >>
> >> I see Alexandre editing A.2.
> >>
> >> I see Eric editing 2 (which he already wrote), 3 (which *mostly*
> exists),
> >> and A.3.
> >>
> >> I don't know about 1, B, and C.
> >>
> >> My reasoning is that there is no objective way of picking any of the
> >> formalisms over another formalism, so the normative expression should be
> the
> >> lowest common denominator: plain English. By making the formalisms all
> >> informative, we free them from the burden of having to explain the
> direct
> >> mapping itself in a generally accessible way. The focus can be totally
> on
> >> presenting the formalisms in all their terseness to an audience that is
> >> familiar with datalog/denotational semantics/whatever.
> >>
> >> I hope this proposal aids discussion.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Richard
> >
> >
>