formal objection to early cutoff of test submissions

This is a formal objection to the early cutoff of submissions to the working
group's test suite.

The candidate recommendation period in the W3C process is designed so that
implementers can test out a potential W3C recommendation to see whether
conforming implementations can be created.  Testing to confirm
implementation behaviour is thus an important part of the candidate
recommendation process.  Cutting off the submission of tests well before the
end of the candidate recommendation period hinders wide review of the
candidate recommendation and goes against the purpose of the W3C process.


Two tests were submitted that examine the behaviour of SHACL implementations
on property paths that contain information about two different kinds of
SPARQL paths.  These tests came from recent implementation experience.  The
aspect of SHACL that they test is not covered by any of the tests in the
current working group's test suite so without them there is no confirmation
that there are two independent implementations of SHACL property paths.
These tests were not accepted.

Two tests were submitted that examine the behaviour of SHACL implementations
of pre-binding.  Pre-binding underlies all of SHACL-SPARQL so it is vitally
important for SHACL-SPARQL both that pre-binding have a suitable definition
and that implementations correctly implement pre-binding.  The working group
approved changes to the definition of pre-binding on 26 April 2017 and the
tests were submitted on 28 April 2017.  These tests replaced previous tests
to examine the behaviour of SHACL implementations of pre-binding that had
become irrelevant because of the change to pre-binding.  These tests were
not accepted.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Nuance Communications

Received on Monday, 1 May 2017 15:51:21 UTC