Comments on Data on the Web Best Practices: BP-1 & BP-2

Dear DWBP WG,

I would like contribute a few comments concerning BP-1 & BP-2.

I'm cc'ing also the joint W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web (SDW) WG,
since some of the relevant issues have been discussed during the 1st
WG f2f meeting [1].

1. BP-1 ("Document data") seems to mix two different requirements:
(a) publishing data documentation (metadata)
(b) publishing metadata in human-readable formats
Is this correct?
In such a case, shouldn't these be rather addressed by two different
BPs? The requirement of publishing metadata shouldn't necessarily
address *how* this is done. This would also be inconsistent with the
fact that the requirement about publishing metadata in
machine-readable formats is addressed by a specific BP (BP-2).

2. BP-2 ("Use machine-readable formats to provide metadata"), section
"Intended outcome":
"It should be possible for computer applications, notably search
tools, to locate and process the metadata easily, which makes it human
readable metadata, machine readability metadata."
(a) It is unclear why this "makes it human readable metadata".
(b) There's probably a typo in "[... ] machine readability metadata" -
shouldn't this rather be "[...] machine readable metadata"?

3. BP-2 makes the point about the use of machine-readable formats for
data discovery via software agents, including search engines. It
points also to specific machine-readable metadata serialisations that
can be embedded in human-readable metadata, and that are currently
used by search engines to optimise discovery. However, I have two
questions on this:
(a) Shouldn't be a requirement for human-readable metadata to *always*
embed their machine-readable version? This also when machine-readable
metadata are available separately. I see a couple of use cases for
this - e.g., optimising discovery via search engines, existing browser
plug-ins able to read RDFa, etc.
(b) Do you think that the requirement of being "discoverable" by Web
search tools should be extended to data? BP-12 partially address this,
but not explicitly. I'm asking since this issue may be relevant to the
SDW WG - see [2].

Thanks!

Andrea

----
[1]http://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/F2f_Barcelona
[2]http://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/BP_Requirements#Content_need_to_be_crawlable.2C_then_able_to_ask_search_engine_or_other_service

-- 
Andrea Perego, Ph.D.
Scientific / Technical Project Officer
European Commission DG JRC
Institute for Environment & Sustainability
Unit H06 - Digital Earth & Reference Data
Via E. Fermi, 2749 - TP 262
21027 Ispra VA, Italy

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

----
The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may
not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official
position of the European Commission.

Received on Thursday, 19 March 2015 09:23:45 UTC