Re: shapes, forms, and footprints for building Linked Data apps

Hi Ruben, others,

I have meanwhile written up some more technical background on how we use 
SHACL for form generation:

http://datashapes.org/forms.html

As Irene already elaborated, we do believe that SHACL is well suited not 
only for validation but also to describe the expected shape of data from 
different viewpoints. The combination of constraints (sh:datatype, 
sh:maxCount etc) with UI layout info (sh:order, sh:group, sh:name, 
dash:viewer, dash:editor, dash:singleLine etc) makes the approach quite 
powerful and neatly integrated. The fact that these are published RDF 
vocabularies, tools from different vendors could compare notes and 
ideally support the same URIs to represent form layouts and widgets. 
Maybe there are chances to collaborate and fine tune this in the future?

FWIW we were a bit puzzled by the table comparing SHACL and ShEx in 
TimBL's document https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Footprints.html. That 
table feels a bit biased.
- There is no reason why SHACL couldn't be used to generate arrays or 
trees of bindings. Several of our algorithms "walk" a shape in parallel 
to the data and then build up visited nodes. GraphQL is one such example.
- SHACL is only unordered as long as you don't use sh:order. The use of 
rdf:Lists in ShEx's RDF syntax makes it awkward to use (e.g. try to 
SPARQL it). And just using the Compact Syntax leaves you with an 
inconsistent and very limiting syntax, e.g. what about sh:group, 
sh:name, sh:description and other properties that are typically needed 
to describe forms, and why introduce another language that requires 
custom tooling compared to Turtle or JSON-LD.

Cheers,
Holger


On 18/06/2019 00:45, Ruben Verborgh wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> The Solid ecosystem (https://solid.inrupt.com/)
> is a way of building decentralized Linked Data apps,
> where people store their data in their own data pod
> and can interact with it using different apps.
>
> To realize this kind of interoperability,
> we will likely heavily rely on shapes,
> extended with forms (UIs for people)
> and footprints (rules on where to store data).
>
> We’ve written down some of our thinking
> in a Design Issue (status: draft) at
> https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Footprints.html
> and I have written the longer story,
> including thoughts about future use cases, at
> https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2019/06/17/shaping-linked-data-apps/
>
> Your feedback as shape experts is very welcome.
> I’m particularly interested in related technologies and use cases
> that we might have missed when writing this down.
>
> Best,
>
> Ruben

Received on Monday, 24 June 2019 04:45:51 UTC