The flexibility of SPARQL/SPIN in SHACL is needed

Hello,

I am a long time user of OWL, SPARQL, and SPIN for the specification and
validation of information standards. One domain I operate in is the
so-called “smart grid” standards community.  That community is fairly
solidly anchored in UML as the language for normative standards. I have
been advocating the use of OWL as a much richer language for specifying
these standards, with one of my primary arguments being the ability to
capture constraints far beyond simple cardinality and domain/range
constraints offered by UML. I have demonstrated this by converting one of
the smart grid standards into OWL, and adding SPIN rules to encode some of
the natural language usage rules found in the specification (see
https://github.com/steveraysteveray/fsgim-owlTesting.git).  I would like to
do this using SHACL, but have not yet done so because it’s not yet a
standard. For this reason, I have been watching the evolution of SHACL from
the sidelines, and occasionally dipping into your discussions on this list.



The one point I would like to make is that the usage rules I have encoded
are quite complex, and involve mathematical calculations to aggregate power
measurements, traversal of graphs (to detect the presence of, say,
electrical generators on a circuit), and much more. I would be very
disappointed if, as it appears, there could be a decision to remove the
flexibility of SPIN/SPARQL statements in SHACL. Indeed, I would definitely
not be able to use SHACL in that case, and my arguments to the smart grid
community to migrate from UML to OWL would be significantly weakened.



Therefore, I implore you to please retain the functionality you already
have in your specification and just make it a standard. It looks like it
can currently do what I need. Releasing it as a standard would give me the
green light to start advocating its use as a specification layer on top of
OWL for my community. Of course I understand SHACL will continue to evolve,
and that is perfectly natural and expected.


 - Steve

Steven R. Ray, Ph.D.
Distinguished Research Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
NASA Research Park
Building 23 (MS 23-11)
P.O. Box 1
Moffett Field, CA 94305-0001
Email:   steve.ray@sv.cmu.edu