Re: rdfs:Graph ? comment on http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#section-dataset and issue 35 (ISSUE-142)

Hi Peter

thank you and the WG for the time spent considering my issue.

I am sorry that you have failed to reach a satisfactory response, and understand the difficulties involved.

My current intent is to raise a formal objection for consideration by the director during the transition review.

I will be clear in that objection that I do not agree with Sandro

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-wg/2013Oct/0075.html

that I am in a Solomon and the Baby situation, and that I do not believe it is best that the specification dies; however, I do believe that asking the director to consider whether asking the WG to actually resolve this issue is appropriate.

I will be drafting the objection in the next 2 weeks: if the WG would like me to accelerate that process please let me know.

Jeremy J Carroll
Principal Architect
Syapse, Inc.



On Oct 11, 2013, at 1:03 PM, Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Jeremy:
> 
> This is a second official response to your message about rdfs:Graph and
> RDF datasets,
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Jul/0021.html,
> which is being tracked as ISSUE-142.
> 
> The first official response from the working group was
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Aug/0050.html
> which stated that the working group was unable to agree on any proposal
> for RDF datasets that goes beyond the very minimal proposal in its current
> documents.   You responded, in
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0005.html,
> that you were not satisfied with this situation.
> 
> The working group again discussed RDF datasets and was again unable to come
> up with any viable solution.  The only resolution that was acceptable was a
> negative one - the RDF working group will leave further semantics of
> datasets and named graphs to some future working group.  Hopefully at that
> time there will be one or more communities of practice using aspects of RDF
> datasets and named graphs that can be used as the starting point for
> portions of a W3C recommendation.
> 
> The working group realizes that the current situation is not totally
> satisfactory to you, but the working group has expended a lot of effort on
> this topic already and has been unsuccessful.  There are no forseeable
> possibilities of a breakthrough here and thus the working group will be
> concentrating its efforts in other areas so as to finish the work it needs
> to do.
> 
> Please indicate whether you wish to pursue this issue further, or whether
> leaving the situation unchanged in this area is acceptable to you. Thank
> you for your concerns on this topic.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> for the RDF Working Group
> 
> 
> 
> On 07/11/2013 12:06 PM, Jeremy J Carroll wrote:
>> 
>> Hello
>> 
>> This is a formal comment on http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/#section-dataset, and it appears a comment on
>> https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-schema/index.html
>> and quite possibly on the RDF Semantics ….
>> 
>> It seems to be a suggestion to reopen issue 35
>> http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/35
>> which points to
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-service-description/
>> hence I am CC-ing dawg.
>> The last part of this message discusses problems in using service description to meet my use case: to me, this is not a comment on DAWG's work, but a comment that RDF Core cannot use DAWG's work of more limited scope to duck the issue.
>> 
>> 
>> Summary: I would like to use rdf to describe graphs in a dataset, e.g. to say who the author was.
>> 
>> as a simple example
>> 
>> my:graph {
>>    my:graph dc:creator "Jeremy J. Carroll" .
>> }
>> 
>> I cannot see how to do this with the current drafts, editors drafts, etc.
>> 
>> A possible approach would be to reopen issue 35  and have a class rdfs:Graph, s.t. for a <URI> used as the name of a graph in a dataset the triple
>>    <URI> rdf:type rdfs:Graph
>> holds.
>> More weakly, I would be satisfied with such a concept being added to the RDF vocabulary, without the implication above holding, but a suggested usage pattern.
>> 
>> Also, I basically finished this message before finding issue 35 and it's superficially reasonable resolution that sd:Graph may meet my needs. This suggests that some documentation link from either RDF Concepts or RDF Schema or RDF Semantics to SPARQL Service Description would be helpful ….
>> However, the Service Description doc
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-service-description/
>> ducks on the issue of whether the name denotes the graph, and so does not give me a clear place to put such metadata.
>> I think if the RDF WG tried writing such documentation, they would discover that the resolution of issue 35 would unravel - the trick is to allow such unravelling without having too much of the named graphs work unravel.
>> 
>> ----
>> 
>> 
>> Here is my actual use case …..
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I first give my motivation, then I give my weak suggestion.
>> 
>> Motivation:
>> =========
>> 
>> I referred to RDF Concepts 1.1 today because I am constructing an RDF dataset and wished to add metadata concerning the named graphs.
>> I am trying to articulate a multi tenant architecture over a SPARQL end point, in which each user is assigned to a specific organization, and then depending on this organization, they have access to different named graphs.
>> 
>> I wish to refer to the named graphs using the URI names I have assigned to them, and I wish to create my own property to add this metadata
>> 
>> 
>> Concretely, my property might be
>>        syapse:owningOrganization
>> 
>> and the quads I was thinking of producing include
>> 
>> GRAPH <https://test.syapse.com/graph/syapse> {
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/syapse> syapse:owningOrganization syapse: .
>>      syapse:owningOrganization rdf:type owl:FunctionalProperty .
>>      syapse:owningOrganization rdfs:range syapse:Organization .
>>      syapse:   rdf:type syapse:Organization .
>>      syapse:Organization rdf:type rdfs:Class .
>>     …
>>     …
>> }
>> 
>> GRAPH <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/base> {
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/base> syapse:owningOrganization syapse: .
>>     …
>>     …
>> }
>> 
>> GRAPH <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/sys> {
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/sys> syapse:owningOrganization syapse: .
>>     …
>>     …
>> }
>> 
>> GRAPH <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/c2> {
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/ontology/c2> syapse:owningOrganization <https://test.syapse.com/graph/southParkUniversity> .
>>     …
>>     …
>> }
>> 
>> GRAPH <https://test.syapse.com/graph/southParkUniversity/abox> {
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/southParkUniversity/abox> syapse:owningOrganization <https://test.syapse.com/graph/southParkUniversity> .
>>     <https://test.syapse.com/graph/southParkUniversity> rdf:type syapse:Organization .
>>     …
>>     …
>> }
>> 
>> 
>> This allows me to run a privileged SPARQL query across the whole dataset to find out which graphs are assigned to which organization, and then knowing which organization a user is in, I can have application logic to determine which named graphs they can access, and restrict their queries to those named graphs.
>> 
>> 
>> Weak suggestion
>> ==============
>> 
>> I read the very limited text in the dataset section, and the note as reflecting a victory for those who do not want the implication that the name of the graph is a graph to hold.
>> As a long standing advocate of the other position in which, of course, it denotes … I am somewhat disappointed.
>> 
>> However, adding such a vocab item can allow the users to decide on a case-by-case basis whether such denotation is intended or not.
>> 
>> e.g.
>> 
>>    rdfs:Graph
>>      rdfs:Graph is the class of RDF Graphs as defined by RDF Concepts.
>>      
>>   Semantics:
>> 
>>    <g> { …. }
>> 
>>    does not imply
>>          g rdf:type rdfs:Graph
>> 
>> 
>> but
>> 
>>     <g> { …. } .
>>     <g>  rdf:type rdfs:Graph
>> 
>> does imply that the interpretation of <g> is given by the graph.
>> 
>> 
>> Problems with the Service Description approach
>> =====================================
>> 
>> Reading
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-service-description/
>> my understanding is that the intent is for the endpoint to provide (closed) metadata about the dataset, which does not enable further comment even from someone with update privileges on the dataset.
>> 
>> e.g. in
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> @prefix sd: <http://www.w3.org/ns/sparql-service-description#> .
>> @prefix ent: <http://www.w3.org/ns/entailment/> .
>> @prefix prof: <http://www.w3.org/ns/owl-profile/> .
>> @prefix void: <http://rdfs.org/ns/void#> .
>> 
>> [] a sd:Service ;
>>     sd:endpoint <http://www.example/sparql/> ;
>>     sd:supportedLanguage sd:SPARQL11Query ;
>>     sd:resultFormat <http://www.w3.org/ns/formats/RDF_XML>, <http://www.w3.org/ns/formats/Turtle> ;
>>     sd:extensionFunction <http://example.org/Distance> ;
>>     sd:feature sd:DereferencesURIs ;
>>     sd:defaultEntailmentRegime ent:RDFS ;
>>     sd:defaultDataset [
>>         a sd:Dataset ;
>>         sd:defaultGraph [
>>             a sd:Graph ;
>>             void:triples 100
>>         ] ;
>>         sd:namedGraph [
>>             a sd:NamedGraph ;
>>             sd:name <http://www.example/named-graph> ;
>>             sd:entailmentRegime ent:OWL-RDF-Based ;
>>             sd:supportedEntailmentProfile prof:RL ;
>>             sd:graph [
>>                 a sd:Graph ;
>>                 void:triples 2000
>>             ]
>>         ]
>>     ] .
>> 
>> <http://example.org/Distance> a sd:Function .
>> 
>> 
>> The description of the named graph is attached to an explicitly blank node, that I then cannot make further comment in in my own graph or indeed inside the graph named <http://www.example/named-graph> itself.
>> Thus I cannot add a dc:creator (or syapse:owningOrganization) triple inside this service description (because SPARQL 1.1 does not give me, nor does it intend to give me) write access to the service description, even if I have write access to <http://www.example/named-graph>
>> 
>> These issues perhaps could be addressed by making sd:graph and sd:name  both 1-1 properties …. but I imagine there may be some reluctance ….
>> 
>> NB - this last comment, is not a formal comment on the Service Description Spec, which seems fit-for-purpose, it is a comment on the current resolution of Issue-35 which neglects that the purpose of SPARQL Service Description is less than is needed to address the issue
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jeremy J Carroll
>> Principal Architect
>> Syapse, Inc.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>

Received on Monday, 14 October 2013 19:03:48 UTC