Re: Enough already

Hi Terry, Martynas,

I have to agree with you both, I see Terry's point that the looks of the 
group ( of which I'm a member as well ) is not really flattering.

To my surprise in a recent W3C related conference at least half of the 
presentations mentioned SHACL / Shapes as a technology they use.
There is a need, there is a drive, we thought we were alone when in our 
products we started relying more and more on SHACL as well ( even though 
its not a formal standard ).

I have given up reading the list, as a SME and Full paying W3C member it 
is not worth my precious time to keep up.
Further more starting a user centric discussion is totally useless if you 
are not member of the core team, we have tried.

So as much as I agree that a W3C standard should not leave room for 
interpretation by the reader, having none at all, which is what it 
unfortunately looks like won't benefit anyone.

That leaves the open question, where to go from here?

From what I see in Terry's email, they are using SHACL, 

Would it help if we survey a panel of current implementers about 
- which parts of SHACL they use
- what is unclear
- where they see room for improvements?
- what works and should be standardized ?

To determine what parts are best suited for the time and effort we can 
still put in there

I don't like the outlook of ending up with nothing.

Met Vriendelijke Groet / With Kind Regards
Bart van Leeuwen


twitter: @semanticfire
tel. +31(0)6-53182997
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From:   Martynas Jusevičius <martynas@graphity.org>
To:     Terry Roach <troach@capsi.com.au>
Cc:     public-rdf-shapes@w3.org
Date:   10-12-2016 12:53
Subject:        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 
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Eveleigh NSW 2015, Australia 

M:  +61 421 054 804 
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