Re: Validating Schemas

It all depends on what you are needing to accomplish with respect to the validation.

It looks like your schema does not use any of the standard schema languages like RDFS or SHACL or OWL. With this, to me, it is not any different from the instance data. And even if your schema was in let’s say SHACL. In the end, it is all the same - it is some RDF that you are validating against some shapes.

Here is an example of using SHACL to validate SHACL itself https://www.w3.org/TR/shacl/#shacl-shacl <https://www.w3.org/TR/shacl/#shacl-shacl>. May be it will give you some ideas.

> On Mar 26, 2020, at 3:14 PM, James Hudson <jameshudson3010@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello Irene,
> 
> Thank you for your comments.
> 
> Yes, that is what I mean by an “alternative representation of RDF”.
> 
> I can certainly see how SHACL would be valuable in validating the instance data ( https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/227ffb77b853a29556be5b5c3a67c309 <https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/227ffb77b853a29556be5b5c3a67c309> ).
> 
> What I am not certain of is how it might be valuable in validating the schema itself ( https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/7deec4df32aa6b97509aeb490f1edf9b <https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/7deec4df32aa6b97509aeb490f1edf9b> ) upon which the instance was based. Perhaps it is not and that is what you appear to be suggesting.
> 
> Regards,
> James
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 2:57 PM Irene Polikoff <irene@topquadrant.com <mailto:irene@topquadrant.com>> wrote:
> JSON-LD, Turtle, RDF/XML, etc. are all different alternative text serialization formats for RDF.  Is this what you meant by “alternative representation of RDF”?
> 
> SHACL does not validate at the level of “is this a valid RDF serialization”. It validates at the level “does this RDF data have the expected shape”.
> 
> I believe pretty much any RDF-based software already has the ability to successfully serialize and de-serialize standard text formats and report an error if the format is incorrect. 
> 
>> On Mar 26, 2020, at 2:43 PM, James Hudson <jameshudson3010@gmail.com <mailto:jameshudson3010@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Yes, I understand that. A json-ld document is an alternate representation of RDF.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> James
>> `
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 2:35 PM Irene Polikoff <irene@topquadrant.com <mailto:irene@topquadrant.com>> wrote:
>> Hello James,
>> 
>> SHACL validates RDF. It does not validate text serializations of RDF to make sure that a serialized document/file itself is a syntactically valid sterilization of RDF. 
>> 
>> So, I would think that first you'd need to have a document that is a valid serialization of RDF i.e., it can be successfully parsed and de-serialized. Then, you could use SHACL to ensure that RDF data corresponds to the SHACL shapes that describe it. I am using “RDF data” loosely, meaning any set of RDF triples, whether it is data or schema does not matter. By schema I mean the model of the data - classes, properties, allowed values for properties.
>> 
>>> On Mar 26, 2020, at 1:33 PM, James Hudson <jameshudson3010@gmail.com <mailto:jameshudson3010@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> Being rather new to the linked data world, I am at the point where I need to work out the best methods for validating schema's and the role that SHACL may or may not be able to play.
>>> 
>>> Since it is easier to discuss something real, I have created a sample schema in the json-ld format and have made it available here:
>>> 
>>> https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/7deec4df32aa6b97509aeb490f1edf9b <https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/7deec4df32aa6b97509aeb490f1edf9b>
>>> 
>>> It can be entered into the json-ld playground and visualized without error.
>>> 
>>> What I mean by validation of the schema, is that I would like to make sure it is valid json-ld document. I have not typed "@Ib" instead of "@id". That there is a "@id" key for every object. Additionally, that when I have declared something as a subclass, that the superclass exists and there are no typos in the superclass name.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps someone has already been working on to playing with shape files for json-ld schema's.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps I am ascribing capabilities to SHACL that it does not have.
>>> 
>>> Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Additionally, for completeness, I have created an instance based on this schema and that can be found here:
>>> 
>>> https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/227ffb77b853a29556be5b5c3a67c309 <https://gist.github.com/James-Hudson3010/227ffb77b853a29556be5b5c3a67c309>
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> James
>> 
>