Re: Shapes/ShEx or the worrying issue of yet another syntax and lack

On 07/19/2014 12:58 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:
>
> Sandro Hawke wrote:
> > As I recall, there was consensus at the RDF Validation Workshop 
> against using either SPIN or ICV.   My memory is nowhere near perfect, 
> but I remember this pretty clearly, since both results surprised me.   
> I assumed Evrin would try to convince people of the merits of ICV and 
> would object to any other solution, but he didn't.  I assumed lots of 
> people would like SPARQL for validation, since it's already widely 
> deployed. Instead, there was agreement that SPARQL-like syntaxes are 
> not suitable for the use cases people in the room cared about.
>
> As I recall, there was support for a user facing syntax that would 
> compile to SPARQL.
>

Yes, I remember that, too.   That's in the charter as a WG Note.

       -- Sandro


> Tom
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> > I expect these points of consensus, and the the requirements that 
> drove them, are what motivated the creation of ShEx.
> >
> > And that's why the Charter was developed as it was, steering away 
> from SPIN and ICV.
> >
> > What I'm hearing now is that for whatever reasons, the Workshop was 
> surprisingly non-representative of the industry, or perhaps was run in 
> a way which corrupted the signal.   Maybe several of us somehow 
> misunderstood what Evrin was saying, or maybe he misunderstood the 
> question being asked.  Maybe the SPARQL question was framed 
> incorrectly when discussed.  Maybe the wrong people were at the 
> Workshop.    Fortunately, it's not too late to change course.
> >
> > So, with that in mind, would it work to just take out the mentions 
> of specific technologies/solutions from the charter?
> >
> >      -- Sandro
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> Cheers,
> >> Kendall
> >>
> >> On Friday, July 18, 2014, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org 
> <mailto:sandro@w3.org>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On 07/18/2014 04:40 PM, Jerven Bolleman wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I completely agree with Kendall.
> >>>>
> >>>> A standard would look at the similarities between Resource 
> Shapes, ICV and SPIN and see if a common syntax can be achieved.
> >>>> What seems to be happening instead is that a 4th independent 
> option is being designed.
> >>>> Which means that the real standard will then need to look into 
> standardising Shex, Resource Shapes, ICV and SPIN.
> >>>> Giving standard number 5, which is how WG’s become inspiration 
> for XKCD and Dilbert comics…
> >>>>
> >>>> ShEX currently reuses practically nothing of the earlier work or 
> existing W3C standards.
> >>>>
> >>>> And a lot is being said about usability but no one recalls the 
> sad joke.
> >>>>
> >>>>    Some people, when confronted with a problem, think
> >>>>    “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two 
> problems.
> >>>>
> >>>> ASCII art is not a requirement any more.
> >>>> Saving bits is a goal of compression algorithms.
> >>>> Code should strive for readability, especially validation code.
> >>>>
> >>>> E.g. this SPARQL pseudo style of using
> >>>> { [] foaf:name xsd:string }
> >>>> XOR
> >>>> { [] foaf:givenName xsd:string }
> >>>>
> >>>> Is a much better idea than
> >>>> { foaf:name xsd:string ;
> >>>>   | foaf:givenName xsd:string }
> >>>> Where we started using the binary OR symbol to mean XOR and that 
> is rather similar to || or the normal OR people are exposed to.
> >>>>
> >>>> For the rest I saw the UniProt ShEX example and it is not at all 
> representative for what a database like UniProt really needs.
> >>>>
> >>>> Attached to this e-mail is PDF/poster about how SPIN is actually 
> looked at in the UniProt consortium.
> >>>>
> >>>> All in all I really encourage the Charter writers to really look 
> at what is out there being used in the semweb world.
> >>>> And look at standardising that instead of looking to the XML and 
> Regex planets, which we thankfully left behind.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Would it work to just take out the mentions of specific 
> technologies/solutions from the charter?
> >>>
> >>> (Note that the charter may have changed since you last read it.)
> >>>
> >>>       -- Sandro
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Regards,
> >>>> Jerven
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 18 Jul 2014, at 18:24, Kendall Clark <kendall@clarkparsia.com 
> <mailto:kendall@clarkparsia.com>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Dimitris Kontokostas 
> <kontokostas@informatik.uni-leipzig.de 
> <mailto:kontokostas@informatik.uni-leipzig.de>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Instead of criticizing what ShEx can't do we should all try to 
> see what ShEx should do.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Why? Standards bodies should be about standardizing existing 
> systems. This is one thing the W3C has consistently gotten wrong in 
> the semantic web space: too much speculative research done in the 
> guise of standardization.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think we all agree that a compact human syntax (with 
> equivalent RDF representation) that covers common validations cases 
> and SPARQL extensions is something we all want.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> SPIN, IBM Resource Shapes, and Stardog ICV already provide that. 
> You can't get any more compact human syntax than, say, Manchester OWL 
> syntax for constraints: see http://docs.stardog.com/icv for many 
> *real* examples from shipping code.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I too don't like some parts of ShEx but I think it's a good 
> initiative to bootstrap a standard.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> That isn't how standardization works best.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I already raised some issues in the mailing list and have a few 
> more from my experience with RDFUnit - but will raise them later since 
> the maintainers are now too busy replying.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Those are all valid, interesting points for ShEx, which is at 
> this point an interesting proof of concept or prototype of an idea. 
> That work should be carried out in an R&D context. W3C Working Groups 
> are not R&D contexts.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>> Kendall Clark
> >>>>
> >>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> Jerven Bolleman Jerven.Bolleman@isb-sib.ch 
> <mailto:Jerven.Bolleman@isb-sib.ch>
> >>>> SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics      Tel: +41 (0)22 379 58 85
> >>>> CMU, rue Michel Servet 1               Fax: +41 (0)22 379 58 58
> >>>> 1211 Geneve 4,
> >>>> Switzerland www.isb-sib.ch <http://www.isb-sib.ch> - 
> www.uniprot.org <http://www.uniprot.org>
> >>>> Follow us at https://twitter.com/#!/uniprot 
> <https://twitter.com/#%21/uniprot>
> >>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>>
> >
>