formal objection to nature of decision on pre-binding and request for advancement to proposed recommendation

This is a formal objection to a resolution made by the RDF Data Shapes
Working Group on 10 May 2017, described at
https://www.w3.org/2017/05/10-shapes-minutes.html#resolution04

This decision changes the definition of pre-binding in SHACL, which is given
in Appendix A of the SHACL document.  Pre-binding is a fundamental part of
the SHACL-SPARQL portion of SHACL.  Every constraint in SHACL-SPARQL depends
on pre-binding.

The change to the definition of pre-binding changes the behaviour of
pre-binding in a way that affects the results of SHACL-SPARQL validation in
very many cases.  This change also changes the results of multiple examples
of pre-binding used in the SHACL document to illustrate the meaning of part
of SHACL not in SHACL-SPARQL.


This change is described as editorial in the resolution, but as it affects
the behaviour of SHACL-SPARQL constraints, it is decidedly not editorial.
The resolution describing the change includes incorrect information that
needs to be changed if the change is to be retained.

This change is a signficant change to the definition of pre-binding.  There
is no evidence that the change has received any signficant review from
within the working group and the change has not received any review at all
from outside the working group.  Such review is needed and a second
Candidate Recommendation period needs to be performed before a version of
SHACL with this definition of pre-binding becomes a W3C Recommendation.


Peter F. Patel-Schneider
Nuance Communications

Received on Friday, 12 May 2017 12:53:35 UTC