RE: tests and inference?

Andy,

So, would you agree that, as things stand, we can not have test cases for
the
functional performance of a SPAQL server as part of the spec?

If so, then I think that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.  The
simplest path would be to specify conformance for servers with no inference,
and then leave clients on their own when the server was performing
inference.

I also think that this issue is sufficiently important that DAWG might re-
consider a means in the protocol for the client to demand NO inference, if
only so the client could establish a baseline against which to understand
whether or not the server was performing correctly.

As you say, there is no means to have functional tests in the broader realm
of server-based inference.

-bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: Seaborne, Andy [mailto:andy.seaborne@hp.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 7:59 AM
To: Thompson, Bryan B.
Cc: 'Dan Connolly '; 'public-rdf-dawg-request@w3.org '; 'RDF Data Access
Working Group '; Bebee, Bradley R.
Subject: Re: tests and inference?




Thompson, Bryan B. wrote:
> Based on my current understanding, the client is not able to either be 
> informed concering what inferences the server may draw, nor is able to 
> constrain what kinds of inference the server may perform.

Not within the query language itself.

For the description of capabilities:

Such information could be recorded in RDF in a service description.  This
would 
seem to be the way to get any information relating to the service made
available 
- assert some RDF facts.

Like RDF assertions about any document - we (DAWG) don't need to provide a 
mechanism to find, publish, change, sign, ... such information as it can be
a 
regular RDF graph somewhere.

For the constraining of queries:

Different services would offer different capabilities.  I think the spectrum
of 
possibilities is wide enough that there is no fixed set we could define now
and 
be useful - implementations don't fall into a neat set of a few classes of 
functionality.

	Andy

>  Given this,
> how can SPARQL tests be written that could be used to demonstrate 
> (non-) conformance by SPARQL processors that perform inference?
> 
> -bryan
>

Received on Thursday, 16 December 2004 13:05:20 UTC