Re: re-opening the DESCRIBE issue

>In reviewing our request for CR,
>   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/crq349
>there was a lot of concern about interoperability
>around DESCRIBE. TimBL took a close look at CBD
>and MSG from
>http://semanticweb.deit.univpm.it/submissions/www2005/WWW2005_signignRDF.pdf

I take it that the relevance of this to DESCRIBE is that the MSG of a 
matching triple would be a reasonable notion for what should be 
delivered as a response to a DESCRIBE query? If so, I think this 
would be dangerous, because the MSG could be extremely large.

>and looked briefly at GK's recent proposal
>  http://www.w3.org/mid/4427D376.9070504@ninebynine.org

That seems like a neat idea and we could do it at very little cost. 
But by itself it amounts only to a hook for other ideas that will do 
all the actual work, and I don't see many of them being out there.

>and concluded that this issue merits considerable further work.
>We talked about the possibility of postponing the issue
>and marking the DESCRIBE syntax "reserved for future use"
>and he was supportive of that.

Phew. I'm for that. Let me formally propose that we postpone this 
issue, on the grounds
(1) there are no currently available techniques for deciding how to 
give a rational response to a DESCRIBE request, in general;
(2) Although we could follow Graham's idea, there are in fact no 
currently proposals for any such URI-named schedules for determining 
such responses, and nobody (?) has given any signs of suggesting any;
(3) The motivation for DESCRIBE is the case where a query user does 
not know what information might be available. However, this issue can 
be approached within the current SPARQL framework by query service 
providers including meta-data in the RDF stores to support less 
pointed queries. I suggest that the possibility of techniques such as 
this serving the primary purpose is more likely, since information 
providers are more motivated than SPARQL engine implementors to 
provide for useful query user experience.

Pat

>
>The issue is hereby re-opened.
>http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/issues#DESCRIBE
>
>I look forward to proposals to close/postpone it. I gather Andy is
>available to discuss them only thru this Friday.
>
>There's still a reasonably good chance that we can get
>a SPARQL CR out next week, if we come to consensus on
>something quickly.
>
>--
>Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
>D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E


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Received on Thursday, 30 March 2006 06:36:29 UTC