Profiles Ontology review by ShEx CG

Dear ShEx Community Group,

The W3C's Dataset eXchange Working Group (DXWG) [1] has published a First Public Working Draft of The Profiles Ontology [2]. The Profiles Ontology is an RDF vocabulary to describe profiles of (one or more) standards for information resources. We believe that this ontology and the work of the DXWG should be of great interest to ShEx members generally as profiles and constraints are closely linked.

The DXWG is chartered to provide a guidance document on publishing application profiles of vocabularies and a recommendation for content negotiation by application profile which it is doing. This ontology was not an anticipated output of the DXWG but has been created to allow for formal semantic descriptions of the components of profiles and for relations between profiles and standards. A more complete description of the ontology is given below.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback on this ontology and particularly your group, again, due to constraint/profile interplay. In reviewing the draft, it might be helpful for you to keep in mind the "Use Cases and Requirements" document that we are working to [3]. We would find it most helpful to get feedback on the following lines:

  1.  Do you agree with the direction of travel of this ontology?
  2.  Are there any areas where we could improve what we have done? [please illustrate]
  3.  Are there any areas where you think the proposal/modelling is wrong or could lead us into describing profiles that are unhelpful? [please give examples and reasons]
  4.  Are there other use cases for formal profile descriptions that we have not considered? [please illustrate]
Also:

  1.  How do you see constraint languages like ShEx benefiting or not from profile definitions created using the Profiles Ontology?

Please also feel free to make any other comments and suggestions regarding the draft. Note that positive comments or general assent to the work's design are very welcome, as these provide evidence of community acceptance. We would like to receive comments on this draft by January 31, 2019, so that those can inform our next working draft.

Please send comments through GitHub issues (https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues - tag 'profile-description') or through email at public-dxwg-comments@w3.org<mailto:public-dxwg-comments@w3.org>mailto:public-dxwg-comments@w3.org.

Thank you,

Nicholas (on behalf of the W3C DXWG)

[1] https://www.w3.org/2017/dxwg/charter
[2] https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/WD-dx-prof-20181218/
[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/dcat-ucr/

The Profiles Ontology - description

The Profiles Ontology (PROF) is a small RDF vocabulary to describe profiles of (one or more) data specifications, i.e., a named set of constraints over those specifications. It provides the general pattern of narrowing the scope of a specification with additional, but consistent, constraints. It is particularly relevant to data exchange situations where conformance to profiles is expected and carries additional context. PROF enables profile descriptions to specify the role of resources related to data exchange such as schemas, ontologies, rules about use of controlled vocabularies, validation tools, and guidelines. PROF may, however, be used to describe the role of resources in any situation where constraints are made on the usage of more general specifications, as well as the relationships between profiles.


Nicholas Car
Senior Experimental Scientist
CSIRO Land & Water
41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD 4102, Australia
E nicholas.car@csiro.au<mailto:nicholas.car@csiro.au> M 0477 560 177 P 07 3833 5632