Re: proposed second reply to Jeremy's comment about named graphs

On Sep 12, 2013, at 05:43 , Peter Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure, I have *nothing* against talking/arguing/fighting with Jeremy (as long as it is off public-rdf-comments).  I often find him a worthy ally/opponent.
> 
> However, the working group has already beat this issue to the dead wisp of a tired pulp.  

I have never heard this expression before:-), but I agree with it...

> My message was a perhaps doomed attempt to bring this point forward in a way that relates to the overall issue being discussed and some its specifics as well without responding to particular proposal which could be dragged out until doomsday (which is, of course, much closer for this working group than the heat death of the universe).

I agree with your response. If this WG can end up with the right vocabulary (or maybe alternative vocabularies) in the form of a WG Note, that would be the ideal outcome. If it cannot, it is still not the end of the World: we do have the mechanism at W3C (most notably Community Groups) to work out vocabularies that may be published at W3C; if they are widely accepted by the community then we are all happy. We should not be hung up on this any more imho...

Ivan

> 
> peter
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:33 PM, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:
> On 09/11/2013 11:19 PM, Peter Patel-Schneider wrote:
>> I read over all the emails in this long discussion carried out on public-rdf-comments, including all the emails that you reference.   I did not want to get bogged down in the weeds, and thus only brought forward the impossibility of doing *anything* more than what was already done.
>> 
>> We could, I suppose, put the proposals that Jeremy has put forward up to a vote in the WG next week.  My vote is "NO!".
>> 
>> Note that Jeremy cannot be proposing that the names of RDF graphs denote the graphs.  Otherwise he would have said "yes" at the beginning of http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0010.html
>> 
> 
> Yes -- we crossed emails on that -- I agree with you.
> 
> 
>> Jeremy's test case in that message also pulls in owl:imports and other OWL vocabulary.   The RDF Working Group has nothing to say about owl:imports or other structural OWL vocabulary.  Any examples that use this vocabulary must be viewed with extreme suspicion.
>> 
> 
> Sure.   If we do consensus process right (and maybe we don't have time), either we'll see that he's saying something we haven't thought of (unlikely) or we'll convince him why what he wants isn't possible, in which case he'll at least be satisfied with our handling of his comment.   Just telling him No doesn't do that.    Ideally, our explanation will go into some spec, so everyone else who has the same thoughts but hasn't come forward can also go away full of understanding.    Maybe that's the Note.
> 
>       -- Sandro
> 
> 
>> 
>> peter
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:
>> On 09/11/2013 08:43 PM, Pat Hayes wrote:
>> I like this. Is it a good idea to also refer to the notes that Sandro and Pierre-Antoine are supposed to be writing? Just to show we havnt stopped worrying about it, you understand.
>> 
>> There's seems to be some lack of community memory on this.  I already gave Jeremy the formal reply to Jeremy's rdf:Graph comment, in which I explained about those two notes, etc [1].   He said he still wasn't happy [2].    I asked for more details [3], and he gave test cases [4] and proposed text [5].   I think we need to respond to *those* not to his earlier comments.
>> 
>> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Aug/0050.html
>> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0005.html
>> [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0007.html
>> [4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0010.html
>> [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0017.html
>> 
>> I haven't yet had a chance to read and think about [4] and [5].
>> 
>>        -- Sandro
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Pat
>> 
>> On Sep 11, 2013, at 1:28 PM, Peter Patel-Schneider wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Jeremy:
>> 
>> This is a second official response to your comment about named graphs in
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Jul/0021.html and
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Sep/0005.html
>> 
>> 
>> The RDF Working Group believes that there are several ways in which RDF
>> graphs and datasets are and will be used.  These include ways that fit into
>> your use cases, where the graph names denote the graph they name or some
>> other formal graph-related construct and where you would indeed say
>> something like
>> 
>> jjc:graph {
>>    jjc:graph dc:creator "Jeremy J. Carroll" .
>> }
>> 
>> However, there are also ways that do not fit into your use cases, for
>> example where the graph names are IRIs that denote some other entity, such
>> as
>> 
>> jjc:jjc {
>>    jjc:jjc rdf:type foaf:Person .
>>    jjc:jjc foaf:lastName "Carroll" .
>>    jjc:jjc foaf:knows jjc:pfps .
>> }
>> 
>> If the RDF semantics required that all graph names denote graph-related
>> constructs this would interfere with these other use cases.  Therefore the RDF
>> Working Group decided to not so require.
>> 
>> Further the RDF Working Group was unable to agree on even a weak theory of
>> named RDF graphs, such as one conditioned on explicit typing.  Even the
>> nature of what graph names might denote was problematic: does the name of an
>> RDF graph denote the graph itself, does it denote some other construct that
>> is related to the graph, or does it even denote the semantic meaning of the
>> graph?
>> 
>> Therefore the working group has produced a very minimal specification for
>> RDF datasets and named graphs that does not depend on denotation.
>> 
>> This approach produces maximally compatability, but does not produce
>> inferences that might be desirable in some use cases.  If you do want
>> certain inferences to be part of your approach, such as the first example
>> above entailing
>>    jjc:graph rdf:type jjc:Graph.
>> you can define and implement a particular RDF entailment regime that
>> sanctions these inferences.
>> 
>> The RDF Working Group believes that this minimal approach will allow
>> different approaches to named graphs to coexist some allowing what you want
>> and others incompatible with what you want.  The flourishing approaches can
>> then be considered for standardization at a later time.
>> 
>> 
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> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C 
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