RE: ACTION-251: (ISSUE-88) write up how an ssn:platform and a sosa:platform are essentially the same, with an example (Spatial Data on the Web Working Group)

Raphael, @Maxime,

Just to agree with you  that your question is valid and does not actually require any rewriting of history to be met.  Instead, as I understand it, there are significant technical reasons arising from  the apparent failure of common tools to behave properly.  It goes something like this:

  If someone wants to work with the core of ssn alone  (ie the simple part) then  all the terms of that  core must be in a different namespace (and I mean namespace) to any of the terms in the more complex part (the full ssn). Tools will go and retrieve the ontology file from the namespace URI that the term refers to, so such tools need to  retrieve a file that contains the core alone when only core terms are being used.

I hope that someone with better knowledge of those tools than I have might be able to explain  this in the public forum. Please don't rely on me. Because in the absence of that argument I agree with you 100%. 

 I'm afraid I had tech troubles with Maxime's  presentation and could not follow  at the time (https://www.w3.org/2016/10/11-sdwssn-minutes#item03)  and I wonder whether perhaps he did indeed present a solution to this problem? It sure looks like he solved it in my reading of the minutes. If so, I 100% agree with you.

--Kerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Krzysztof Janowicz [mailto:janowicz@ucsb.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, 25 January 2017 5:55 AM
To: Raphaël Troncy <raphael.troncy@eurecom.fr>; Kerry Taylor <kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au>; Rob Atkinson <rob@metalinkage.com.au>; Raúl García Castro <rgarcia@fi.upm.es>; public-sdw-wg@w3.org; Cox, Simon (CESRE, Kensington) <Simon.Cox@csiro.au>; Armin Haller <armin.haller@anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: ACTION-251: (ISSUE-88) write up how an ssn:platform and a sosa:platform are essentially the same, with an example (Spatial Data on the Web Working Group)

Hi Raphaël,

> I may agree with this argument if i) sosa:Platform was an 
> "established" and used concept *and* if ii) ssn:Platform didn't exist 
> already but we have nearly the exact opposite situation here! I would 
> rather suggest to stop re-inventing the wheel.

I see the point you are making, note however that we are not reinventing the wheel. SSN will be in a new namespace, will have new axioms (more specifically half of them will be gone), and also new/changed textual definitions. This is why we often talk about the 'old' SSN and the 'new' 
SSN. About a year ago we agreed to have a replacement for the old SSO within the old SSN by introducing a lightweight schema.org-style ontology that is now called SOSA. Being the lightweight part, we agreed that SSN would built up on SOSA by adding a stronger axiomatization as well as classes that are in SSN but not SOSA, e.g., Deployment the survival range of sensors, and so forth. Therefore the new SSN imports SOSA and adds more details on top of it. We expect that there will be substantially more SOSA users than SSN users which is analogous to the situation with schema.org. Therefore SOSA only focuses on a small subset of classes. Consequently, SOSA classes are (in almost all cases) either broader than SSN classes, i.e., SSN classes are subclasses of SOSA classes, or both are the same. See also the groups public working draft for details.

Best,
Krzysztof

On 01/24/2017 10:15 AM, Raphaël Troncy wrote:
>> Yes, you are right. I am trying to make a broader argument to prevent 
>> us from having to revisit the discussion over and over again. As far 
>> as the specific platform example is concerned, we can simply use the 
>> sosa:platform in the SSN ontology and thus only have one class and 
>> therefore no confusion among developers (this would be just like 
>> using DC or FOAF and so forth). We cannot do it the other way around 
>> as SOSA does not import SSN. The effect is the same: there is only 
>> one platform class with the same description and no confusion.
>
> I may agree with this argument if i) sosa:Platform was an 
> "established" and used concept *and* if ii) ssn:Platform didn't exist 
> already but we have nearly the exact opposite situation here! I would 
> rather suggest to stop re-inventing the wheel.
>
>   Raphaël
>


--
Krzysztof Janowicz

Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
4830 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060

Email: jano@geog.ucsb.edu
Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/

Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

Received on Wednesday, 25 January 2017 12:58:11 UTC