name of the group

On 07/22/2014 08:20 AM, Irene Polikoff wrote:
> +1 for renaming the group.
> Not only does the name pre-impose the outcome, even more importantly, it introduces a brand new terminology where none is required.
>
>
> There are already widely understood and used ways to talk about this topic such as constraint and data validation.

The workshop was called "RDF Validation Workshop" and people pushed back 
that this was about more than validation, so the name should be broader.

I hear "constraints" meaning a lot of different things, even within RDF.

I think consensus at the Validation Workshop was that the core notion 
was about what we usually call graph patterns, but with additional 
things like constraining the types and values of literals, and making 
these patterns recursive/reusable.    So the name "pattern" no longer 
really applied either.

IBM had proposed "resource shapes", and so "shapes" ended up being the 
word that stuck, and after some recent discussion, we migrated to "data 
shapes" for the broader context, to help avoid confusion for people who 
think it might be about visual or physical stuff.

There's nothing about that name that pre-supposes the technology. 
SPARQL, SPIN, OWL, ICV, ...  are perfectly reasonable technologies for 
declaring data shapes, give or take some tweaks that have been mentioned.

>   One can't underestimate the negative impact any new terminology has on the marketplace adoption. Where are times when the new terminology is necessary and there is no way to avoid doing so. This is not one of them.

As I seem to be saying a lot: I don't agree, but I'd honestly be happy 
to be proven wrong.    What term is better than "data shapes" for the 
use cases in the motivation section of the charter, or some other set of 
uses cases you're confident the group will approve?

Also, just to be clear, the name of the Working Group and the name of 
the Technology/Standards are often different:

WebOnt produced OWL
DAWG produced SPARQL

At some point in the life of the group, the group decides what to name 
the thing it's Recommending.

         -- Sandro

>
> Regards,
>
> Irene Polikoff
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 4:12 AM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> The discussion is really interesting, but I'm afraid grounded on sand and quite a waste of time now. As long as the cases for which we want RDF validation / shape checking are not further documented/formalized, firing examples by email will be a very stimulating game, but we won't be able to use them to disqualify either ShEx or SPIN or any other. Or to convince their creators to update them, if that's the best strategy.
>> I imagine things will be quite different once there appears in a formal Group Note some requirements that are super-hard to tackle for ShEx or SPIN...
>>
>> I found Holger's last contrib to be especially interesting in fact. If someone like him thinks that an answer to the current draft charter [1] is: "oh, we could also make a group around SPIN", then it is indeed that there is something fishy with the current charter. We should create a technology-agnostic WG here. If the discussion demonstrates there's not enough consensus for a specific technology, consensus needs to be built.
>>
>> Personally I thought the current charter was neutral enough, and its focus on use case and requirements strong enough to warrant bias towards a given technology. Especially the word 'shapes' was not ShEx-binding, as it not used only by ShEx.
>> But well, the group could also be titled with "constraints" instead of "shapes". And let the notion of shapes re-emerge through requirements, if it's indeed a relevant one (I believe it is, but well...).
>>
>> By the way I believe the charter could be a bit stronger on the OWL side. If there's a new standard for constraint checking, the group should have identified when users should use OWL, and when they should use the new standard. It might be just a matter of pointing to some existing papers on the topic.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Antoine
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/charter
>>
>>> On 7/22/14 9:13 AM, Paul wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> As a SPIN and ICV user myself, I have no objections in standardising nor SPIN nor a closed world semantics OWL.
>>> I have no opinions yet on ShEx since not studied.
>>>
>>> But what we as implementation partner encounter doing jobs (mainly linked data in the government domain) is that both SPIN and ICV are very difficult to sell.
>>> The reasons might be different (perceived as difficult, overloading the system, OWL being already closed in the minds of people).
>>>
>>> So if there would come along a constraint language death simple (with escape route to SPARQL) that would get my vote also.
>>>
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>
>>> Kind Regards,
>>> Paul Hermans
>

Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2014 12:54:51 UTC