Re: Enough already

Hey Terry,

as I see it, the debate is not about perfection, but precision.

Do you see people arguing about RDF or SPARQL specs? No, because they are
defined precisely using semantics and algebra. That is the guarantee for
robustness, not merely application in practice.

LDP started a trend which SHACL seems to be following, that the editors are
not able or willing to produce such precise, theory-backed definitions and
are trying to push the spec out of the door ASAP. This might be of
advantage to some players in the short term, but detrimental to the future
of Semantic Web.

In case of SHACL specifically, I think the problem is that while SPIN was
an elegant concept on top of SPARQL, shoehorning constraints into a
vocabulary is a model mismatch, a little like putting an ORM on top of
RDBMS: it works most of the time, but there will always be corner cases you
cannot hammer out.


Best,

Martynas

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Terry Roach <troach@capsi.com.au> wrote:

> If I may interject in this debate, this all seems quite bewildering to me.
>
> I am a pragmatic, practitioner of semantic technologies;  is a mere
> consumer of W3C standards. Our company builds products based on your ideas
> and so maybe I am not accustomed to how these things get cooked up, but
> take a look at yourselves please. Somebody needs to inject a dose of
> reality into this conversation.
>
> We are very interested in the SHACL standard making it’s way through this
> process and becoming endorsed so that we can commit to it in our products.
> There will be no better test of the value and robustness of SHACL than the
> community of semantic developers applying it in practice.
>
> No standard is born perfect, of course it will evolve and I expect we will
> find issues that will surely be addressed as it matures. But it needs to
> get out of the door.
>
> Perfection is the enemy of innovation here.
>
> If there are any substantive issues with the standard, then of course
> robust debate is great, but that should be in the form of a positive,
> constructive suggestions. I am just seeing myopic, pedantic grandstanding
> here.
>
> There is a very vocal minority (of one) holding this debate hostage and it
> is a travesty that the enormous effort that has gone into this piece of
> work is being held up in this way.
>
> Enough already
>
>
> *Terry Roach*
> Chief Executive Officer
>
>
> Suite 105, International Business Centre, Australia Technology Park
> 2 Cornwallis St.
> Eveleigh NSW 2015, Australia
>
> M:  +61 421 054 804
> troach@capsi.com.au
> www.capsi.com.au
>
>
>
>
>