Re: Reminder of the workshop and its outcome

The results of this workshop notwithstanding -- since I don't understand
them to be binding on anyone -- the problem with ShEx is that it has no
users, no production-ready implementations, no test suites, no
documentation, no experienced body of practitioners, and no vendors
standing behind it. Software and standards are about a lot more than a
specification document and some proof of concept code, as I'm sure everyone
agrees.

I'm sure that it's very interesting work. But to say that it's work that's
ready to be standardized is quite a stretch, no matter what the outcome of
the workshop. We point to the outcome of the workshop as somehow binding or
instructive, but I don't see anywhere in the report of the workshop where
ShEx is mentioned. I'm not even sure ShEx existed at that time. It seems
like a classic case of WG's doing R&D to try to standardize ShEx at this
time. Haven't we done enough of that in this space?

The other possibilities, no matter what the outcome of the workshop, *are*
ready to be standardized and I rather suspect some work on combining the
best elements of each will get us much further, must faster than trying to
mature ShEx.

Cheers,
Kendall

PS--It's "ICV", not "CIV". :>


On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been on vacation and haven't had a chance to follow the discussion in
> details but I'm a bit surprised by the way the discussion is going. We seem
> to have lost sight of the fact that the proposed charter was drafted based
> on the outcome of the workshop that took place last year and provided for a
> direction to follow.
>
> With that in mind, on behalf of the chairs of the workshop, I'd like to
> remind everyone that:
>
> TopQuadrant was invited to present at the workshop.
>
> During the workshop, Guoqian Jiang (Mayo) presented SPIN (with SPARQL
> queries, as it was in the Member Submission):
>
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/images/d/d6/RDF-Validation-Workshop-GJiang-v1.0.pdf
> 14-17
>
> The workshop participants found this good for enforcement but not
> high-enough level for definition, like SPARQL.
>
> SPIN apparently has a more declarative representation, but that makes it
> basically like Application Profiles and Resource Shapes
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-shapes/2014Jul/0018.html
>
> ShEx is an extension of Resource Shapes to provide disjunction, grouping
> and semantic actions.
>
> ShExC is a human-facing schema language (like RNG Compact Syntax)
> capturing the ShEx expressivity in a much smaller syntax. Compare the ~20
> lines of ShExC to the hundreds in <
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-shapes/2014Jul/att-0002/sotaspin-text.spin.ttl
> >.
>
> Independently of the shortcomings one may find in ShEx which I would
> expect a WG to discuss and address as necessary, I would like to point out
> that although the crux of the discussion has focused on validation, the
> workshop made it very clear that the need wasn't simply about validation
> but also about definition/description - as in describing the data a
> specific service can receive. Solutions that may be perfectly suitable for
> validation aren't necessarily as suitable for description. The workshop
> concluded with:
>
> The participants agreed that the W3C should launch an activity to develop
> a human and machine-readable description of the "shape" of the RDF graphs
> that a service produces or consumes. This description should be usable for
> validation, form-generation, as well as human-readable documentation. The
> participants further agreed that the solution must provide a declarative
> way of describing simple integrity constraints along with an extension
> mechanism that allows using technologies such as SPARQL to specify more
> complex constraints.
>
> Participants had the opportunity to agree to standardize SPIN or CIV.
> That's not what they thought the W3C should do.
>
> Note that this isn't to say that ShEx is necessary the perfect answer but
> I don't think it is very productive to ignore past discussions and
> agreements. Any counter proposal should be positioned with regard to the
> outcome of the workshop.
>
> Best regards.
> --
> Arnaud  Le Hors - Software Standards Architect - IBM Software Group
>