Re: adding hypermedia to spatial data best practices

Personally, I think the relationship between "data" and "hyperlinking"
needs some greater care.  In a self-contained database, relationships are a
first-class concern - however there is a prevalence in the linked data
world of using ad-hoc approaches to generating hyperlinks - for example
using owl:sameAs to link to an interactive mapping application via
geographical coordinates. using very general link semantics "rdf:seeAlso"
for links to related data is another common pattern. The lack of a
demonstrably good practice is fairly hard to reconcile with any potential
to be able to use such links in any automated fashion, so the development
of best practice discussion and exemplar resources is an important step to
take. fortunately, the Linked Data web is still tiny compared to the
problem space, so there is not a huge amount invested in sub-optimal
approaches.

I think a "star" that matters is missing - which is to make the meaning of
hyperlinks explicit and discoverable - this is far more useful than putting
the data into RDF per se, but one could argue thats the underlying intent
of using RDF, in that such links have URIs for link predicates - and there
is an implication regarding what those URIs should resolve to.  Maybe there
is some good practice out there somewhere of how to hyperlink without
losing information or adding more noise to the system we could point to -
but I haven't seen one in the geospatial domain.

Rob Atkinson


On Wed, 29 Jul 2015 at 11:11 <Simon.Cox@csiro.au> wrote:

> Hmm. That's interesting that you mention the coupling of 'specific model'
> with 'linked data'. We must be careful about bringing the 5th-star into
> play too soon. Linked data relies first on (i) stable, resolvable URIs,
> (ii) open formats, and (iii) hyperlinks, so let's make sure that message
> gets across first and is not buried in premature focus on semantics.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik Wilde [mailto:dret@berkeley.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 July 2015 9:53 AM
> To: Jeremy Tandy; public-sdw-comments@w3.org
> Cc: Ed Parsons
> Subject: Re: adding hypermedia to spatial data best practices
>
> hello jeremy.
>
> On 2015-07-27 02:44, Jeremy Tandy wrote:
> > As one of the editors for the Best Practice doc, I will read through
> > the two resources you cite in the hope that there will be less for me
> > to write :-) ... seriously though, I will review and match your work
> > against our formative requirements. Holiday season is upon us so rate
> > of progress might be a little slow ...
>
> no worries. and seriously from my side, i'd love to get feedback and even
> requests for more detailed content for both resources. i see a lo0t on
> confusion in the spectrum between linked data (which mandates a specific
> model that not everybody necessarily wants to use) and no guidance in which
> case the hypermedia aspect (imho the biggest value proposition of the web
> by far, when combined with REST's uniform interface constraint) often gets
> forgotten. thus my attempt to talk about "web data" that focuses on what
> makes the web valuable, without prescribing a specific path to realize that
> value.
>
> thanks and cheers,
>
> dret.
>
> --
> erik wilde | mailto:dret@berkeley.edu  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
>             | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
>             | http://dret.net/netdret http://twitter.com/dret |
>
>