Re: Subsetting data

On 2016-01-01 10:17, Phil Archer wrote:
>
>
> On 31/12/2015 02:07, Rob Atkinson wrote:
>> I'm not a strong set-theoretician - but it strikes me there are some
>> tensions here:
>>
>> Does the identifier of a set mean that the members of that set are
>> constant, known in advance and always retrievable?
>
> Nope. You can just as easily have a stable ID for a 'latest version' or
> 'current value'. There should also be an ID for an immutable version. See
> http://www.w3.org/TR/dwbp/#VersionIdentifiers.
>
>    Is a query endpoint a
>> resource (does either URI or URL have meaning against a query that delivers
>> real time data - including the use case of "at this point in time we think
>> these things are members of this set?" )
>>
>> If the subset is the result of a query - and you care that it is the same
>> subset another time you look at it - are you actually assigning an
>> identifier to the artefact - which is the query response, whose properties
>> include the original query, where it was made, and the time it was made?
>
> For persistence, no specific technology or query should be baked into the URL.
> My example of
> http://weather.example.com/temperature/UK/London/noon/today
> can persist well beyond the lifetime of whatever technology might be installed
> in 2016 as the URL would be interpreted by the software of the day.

actually, this implies a very specific data model: strict hierarchies - in the
end, equivalents of directory hierarchies. This is ftp age ;-)

>
>>
>> Can you define an ontology for terms like subset, query, response that you
>> all agree on?
>
> That would be going beyond the current aim as I see it.

hm, how can you do subsetting without having a definition of what it means?

-Peter

>
>>
>> I share Phil's implicit concern that subsetting by type with URI patterns
>> may not be universally applicable - IMHO that equates to a "sub-register"
>> pattern, where a set has its members defined by some identifiable process
>> (indepent of any query functions available) - which may include explicit
>> subsets - for example by object type, or delegated registration processes.
>> That probably fits the UK implementation better than a query-defined
>> subset.
>>
>> If subsets have some prior meaning - and a query is used to access then
>> from a service endpint - then the query is a URL that needs to be bound to
>> the object URI. AFAICT thats a very different thing to saying an arbitrary
>> query result defines a subset of data.
>>
>> I think you may, in general, assign an ID to the artefact which is the
>> result of a query at a given time, and if you want to make that into
>> something with more semantics then you need make it into a new type of
>> object which can be described in terms of what it means. I think currently
>> the conversation is conflating these two perspectives of "subset".
>
> I don't think we're talking about defining any new semantics. URIs are dumb
> strings (if we break that, we break the Web). It's probably good practice to
> include links and relations as others suggest in this thread, so the
> dcterms:isPartOf predicate is clearly useful. The only new semantics I can see
> we may want to think about some sort of property that can link a persistent
> URI to an ephemeral query that is the current way to return whatever the ID is
> for - but I'd be happy not to do this unless either of the two groups
> discussing this think it necessary.
>
> Phil.
>
>>
>> Cheers, and farewell to 2015.
>> Rob Atkinson.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 at 08:26 <Simon.Cox@csiro.au> wrote:
>>
>>> Another way of looking at it is that a query, encoded as a URI pattern,
>>> defines an implicit set of potential URIs, each of which denotes a subset.
>>>
>>> Simon J D Cox
>>> Environmental Informatics
>>> CSIRO Land and Water
>>>
>>> E simon.cox@csiro.au T +61 3 9545 2365 M +61 403 302 672
>>> Physical: Central Reception, Bayview Avenue, Clayton, Vic 3168
>>> Deliveries: Gate 3, Normanby Road, Clayton, Vic 3168
>>> Postal: Private Bag 10, Clayton South, Vic 3169
>>> http://people.csiro.au/Simon-Cox
>>> http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-3420
>>> http://researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Cox3
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Phil Archer
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, 30 December 2015 6:31:16 PM
>>> *To:* Manolis Koubarakis; 'public-sdw-comments@w3.org'; Annette Greiner;
>>> Eric Stephan; Tandy, Jeremy; public-dwbp-comments@w3.org
>>> *Subject:* Subsetting data
>>>
>>> At various times in recent months I have promised to look into the topic
>>> of persistent identifiers for subsets of data. This came up at the SDW
>>> F2F in Sapporo but has also been raised by Annette in DWBP. In between
>>> festive activities I've been giving this some thought and have tried to
>>> begin to commit some ideas to a page [1].
>>>
>>> During the CEO-LD meeting, Jeremy pointed to OpenSearch as a possible
>>> way forward, including its geo-temporal extensions defined by the OGC.
>>> There is also the Linked Data API as a means of doing this, and what
>>> they both have in common is that they offer an intermediate layer that
>>> turns a URL into a query.
>>>
>>> How do you define a persistent identifier for a subset of a dataset? IMO
>>> you mint a URI and say "this identifies a subset of a dataset" - and
>>> then provide a means of programmatically going from the URI to a query
>>> that returns the subset. As long as you can replace the intermediate
>>> layer with another one that also returns the same subset, we're done.
>>>
>>> The UK Government Linked Data examples tend to be along the lines of:
>>>
>>> http://transport.data.gov.uk/id/stations
>>> returns a list of all stations in Britain.
>>>
>>> http://transport.data.gov.uk/id/stations/Manchester
>>> returns a list of stations in Manchester
>>>
>>> http://transport.data.gov.uk/id/stations/Manchester/Piccadilly
>>> identifies Manchester Piccadilly station.
>>>
>>> All of that data of course comes from a single dataset.
>>>
>>> Does this work in the real worlds of meteorology and UBL/PNNL?
>>>
>>> Phil.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] https://github.com/w3c/sdw/blob/gh-pages/subsetting/index.md
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil Archer
>>> W3C Data Activity Lead
>>> http://www.w3.org/2013/data/
>>>
>>> http://philarcher.org
>>> +44 (0)7887 767755
>>> @philarcher1
>>>
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Dr. Peter Baumann
 - Professor of Computer Science, Jacobs University Bremen
   www.faculty.jacobs-university.de/pbaumann
   mail: p.baumann@jacobs-university.de
   tel: +49-421-200-3178, fax: +49-421-200-493178
 - Executive Director, rasdaman GmbH Bremen (HRB 26793)
   www.rasdaman.com, mail: baumann@rasdaman.com
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Received on Friday, 1 January 2016 13:44:42 UTC