Re: Why not adopt ShEx? (was Re: Enough already)

Everybody,
Please.

There is no point in trying to convince people that your favorite 
technology is better than the other. I've seen the same happen with XML 
Schema and Relax NG. In the end we have both and they are both used. My 
guess is the same will be true of SHACL and ShEx and this is totally fine.

My hope was to make both of them W3C Recommendations.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Open Web & Blockchain 
Technologies - IBM Cloud




From:   Dean Allemang <dallemang@workingontologist.com>
To:     public-rdf-shapes@w3.org
Date:   12/12/2016 07:18 PM
Subject:        Re: Why not adopt ShEx? (was Re: Enough already)
Sent by:        deanallemang@gmail.com



Sorry, but I see zero advantages of ShEx over SPIN/SPARQL.

Why would I want to lock my software into a new non-standard syntax with
close to none adoption, when I can simply use the query engine to validate
constraints?




I couldn't agree more.  In FIBO,  we have been looking for a constraint 
language to help us make definitions that go beyond the capabilities of 
OWL.  I presented these at the inaugural meeting of the SHAPES group a 
couple years ago.  It is easy to specify them in SPARQL, and we have done 
so (and I did the same in SHACL, now that there is a write-up of how it 
works). 

When we move from our conceptual ontology to something operational for a 
Proof of Concept, some vendor is always  involved.  That vendor (different 
one for each PoC) always has an RDF store somewhere in their stack.  They 
can always consume OWL (though often through a rule engine interpretations 
via OWL2RL).  For rules/constraints that go beyond OWL, we have to work 
out some way to give them the rules.   SWRL?  Some of them can manage 
that. RIF?  Everyone knows what it is, but few can handle it out of the 
box.  Other rule systems have varying degrees of uptake. 

But one thing all the triple stores can manage is SPARQL.  "How about if I 
give you the constraints in SPARQL?"  the answer is always, "Oh, sure, 
that works".  Because they are all triple stores, and they already do it. 
  

This doesn't mean that we have to do this in SPARQL, but it does mean that 
if we have that option, we shortcut a lot of work to get to our Proofs of 
Concept. 

In the end, I'm just re-iterating what Martynas has said much more 
succinctly, but in the context of a whole industry effort (FIBO) and a 
selection of vendors who want to work with us. 



Dean