mischaracterisation of my comments on SPARQL Query Langage last draft

I believe that the DAWG transition request to CR 
(http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/crq349) mischaracterises my 
objections expressed in 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2006Feb/0028 
of 22 February 2006 to


  SPARQL Query Language for RDF,  W3C Working Draft 20 February 2006

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/.

I have already responded to this list concerning this 
mis-characterisation, in 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-dawg-comments/2006Mar/0057.html 
of 22 March 2006, with the following wording:

	My view is that my message points out some deficiencies in the definitions underlying the design of BGP
	querying.  I thus do not see how my message can possibly be characterised as not demonstrating design errors.

However, in the DAWG transition request to CR, my objections are characterised as being essentially editorial.  
I therefore do not believe that the DAWG transition request to CR has a faithful rendering of the outstanding dissent.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Bell Labs Research





The relevant portion of http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/crq349 is:

On 22 February, Peter F. Patel-Schneider sent comments on Section 1 and 
Section 2 of SPARQL Query Language for RDF 
<http://www.w3.org/mid/20060222.185654.133907622.pfps@research.bell-labs.com>: 


    In general I found the first two sections of the document *very*
    hard to understand. The mixing of definitions, explanation,
    information, etc. confused me over and over again. I strongly
    suggest an organization something like:

        * Introduction (informative)
        * Formal development (normative)
              o Underlying notions (normative)
              o Patterns and matching (normative)
        * SPARQL syntax (normative)
        * Informal narrative (informative)
        * Examples (informative)

    I also found that things that didn't need to be explained were
    explained, and things that did need to be explained were not
    explained. A major example of the latter is the role of the scoping
    graph. Examples showing why E-matching is defined the way it is
    would be particularly useful.

    Because of the problems I see in Section 2, I do not feel that I can
    adequately understand the remainder of the document.

    Because of these problems I do not feel that this document should be
    advanced to the next stage in the W3C recommendation process without
    going through another last-call stage.

Our response of 22 March 
<http://www.w3.org/mid/1143049602.12963.360.camel@dirk.w3.org> is:

    After perhaps overly brief consideration of your comments, we are
    somewhat sympathetic to your concerns about organization and
    clarity; however, we also have schedule considerations and the
    investment in other reviewers. Re-organizing the document at this
    stage would delay things considerably; it's not even clear that we
    could get a sufficient number of reviewers to take another look
    before CR.

    The specific examples you give below are very valuable; I am marking
    this thread [needstest], which allows us to find it more easily
    during CR and integrate the examples you give into our test suite.
    We have also discussed the possibility of significant organizational
    changes after CR, such as moving the formal definitions to the back
    of the document.

    As far as I can tell, all of the examples you give are useful
    clarification questions, but they do not demonstrate design errors.
    If they do, in fact, demonstrate design errors, I'm reasonably
    confident we will discover that as we integrate them into our test
    suite during CR.

    Are you, by chance, satisfied by this response, which does not
    involve making the changes you request at this time, but includes an
    offer to give them due consideration after we request CR? If not,
    there's no need to reply; I'm marking this comment down as
    outstanding dissent unless I hear otherwise.

Received on Thursday, 30 March 2006 01:00:15 UTC