RE: is shexc useful?

Sandro,

 

 

< That's essentially true of every technology working its way through W3C.  Whatever comes into the process gets turned into something else on its way to Rec.   When things work properly, along the way, it picks up lots of production implementations, gets lots of companies standing behind it, and probably gets some books.   Whatever of those things it had before starting the process.... those things maybe help bootstrap the process, but they're also a drag on the process since they often require backward compatibility.    Are the current SPIN and ICV users perfectly okay with those technologies being changed by the WG?   So having those things at the start is a mixed blessing.   Probably a net positive, but still a mixed blessing.>

 

On this topic you and I have an important philosophical disagreement. I believe that practical experiences of using implemented technologies in deployed situations (and I don’t include academic work in this category) are critical to “getting things right”. They keep one grounded, focused on what is real and what is important as opposed to someone’s theory of what may be needed. Without this, having the resulting standard “work properly” is very unlikely. Does it happen? Yes, but not often.

 

When a new “standard” reaches a recommendation status, there will be some people implementing it, some people writing about it, etc. whether it is practically useful or not. But, if it misses the target, this community will remain a very small minority. Unfortunately, this has been true for a number of W3C recommendations.

 

Regards,

 

Irene



 

From: Sandro Hawke [mailto:sandro@w3.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 2:38 PM
To: Kendall Clark
Cc: Holger Knublauch; public-rdf-shapes@w3.org
Subject: is shexc useful?

 

[changing the subject, since you changed the topic]

On 08/06/2014 08:58 AM, Kendall Clark wrote:

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:


Is it?    To me it looks like someone combined data structure definitions from any language that has such things (Pascal, C, Java, Go, ....) with the Kleene operators, known to every programmer from EBNF and RegExps.

Eric may have been thinking about relaxng, but the design makes prefect sense and seems completely familiar to some of us not steeped in relaxng

 

Isn't this still a vendor organization?


W3C is probably more accurately described as a multi-stakeholder organization.   Its mission involves the good of the Web, not specifically the good of its members or a set of vendors.   The arguments that should win the day are grounded in what's going to be long-term good for the Web (and the world at large), much more than good for one specific vendor or set of vendors.





Whatever you want to say about the origin and quality of ShEx syntax (I don't like it at all, personally), the fact remains:

 

* it has no users


The reply from Jose Emilio Labra Gayo shows otherwise.




* it has no production implementations

* it has no *company* standing behind it to support it in the market

* it has no experts writing books about it


That's essentially true of every technology working its way through W3C.  Whatever comes into the process gets turned into something else on its way to Rec.   When things work properly, along the way, it picks up lots of production implementations, gets lots of companies standing behind it, and probably gets some books.   Whatever of those things it had before starting the process.... those things maybe help bootstrap the process, but they're also a drag on the process since they often require backward compatibility.    Are the current SPIN and ICV users perfectly okay with those technologies being changed by the WG?   So having those things at the start is a mixed blessing.   Probably a net positive, but still a mixed blessing.





 

I have told Holger many times privately that I don't really like SPIN too much, but it has *all* of the above things and more. Same goes for IBM Resource Shapes.

 

ShEx is a research project and nothing more. I thought we weren't doing R&D in W3C WGs any more?

 


It seems to me like it's aways a matter of degree, with every WG doing some R&D.   What we don't want is a REC whose predicted success is based on untested assumptions.    But all these inputs took to me to have various untested assumptions, when you consider them being applied to all the use cases being presented.





There are *three* at least *adequate* commercial solutions to start from. There's simply no need for ShEx.

 


I've seen a variety of statements from people on this list, and at the workshop, that seem to disagree.




Cheers,

Kendall 

 

PS--No offense meant to EricP: he's a fine researcher in this space and I'm sure there are several good papers to be written about ShEx. 


My understanding is Eric isn't trying to do research.   He's been trying to solve the problem that the Workshop brought to light.  Success will be technology adoption and user satisfaction, not publications.   If the technology turns out not to be useful, that's also success for Eric -- the problem is still solved.




But this is standardization of a space that has, in some sense, *too many* starting points, not too few. SPIN, Resource Shapes, and even ICV are all *real* systems in comparison.


Yes, but the workshop conclusion was none of those were sufficient.   Perhaps that conclusion was wrong, I know.   This is something the WG will have to determine.   IMHO there's no point is us trying to figure it out via this list.

     -- Sandro