Re: SKOS use cases format

Alistair

apologies for the late response... been away.

On the whole I'm pretty much in favour of this, except for two thoughts:

1) the functionality/behaviour section should come first
2) you need to stress the optionality of providing a vocabulary--I could 
imagine several companies that would be unwilling to put their 
vocabularies into the public domain.

regards

Bernard

Alistair Miles  wrote on 22/11/06 12:26:

> 
> Hi Antoine, Jon, Daniel,
> 
> How about this for a call for use cases and use case format ...
> 
> ---
> 
>   W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group
> 
>   Call for Use Cases: Simple Knowledge Organisation Systems (SKOS)
> 
> Are you currently using SKOS, or considering using SKOS in the near 
> future? If so, please tell us more by filling in the questionnaire below 
> and sending it to:
> 
>   public-swd-wg@w3.org
> 
> The information you provide will be influential in guiding the further 
> development of SKOS towards W3C Recommendation status.
> 
> We understand that your time is precious, so please don't feel you have 
> to answer every question. However, the more information you can provide, 
> the easier it will be for the Working Group to understand your 
> requirements. Questions marked with an asterix (*) are more important.
> 
> We are particularly interested in use cases describing the use of 
> controlled structured vocabularies in distributed, metadata-driven 
> applications. This includes the use of thesauri, classification schemes, 
> subject heading systems and taxonomies to facilitate discovery and 
> retrieval of information. This also includes situations where two or 
> more vocabularies must be "mapped" or "linked" in order to provide 
> applications using heterogeneous metadata from different sources.
> 
> However, we're not ruling anything out at this stage, and the Working 
> Group will carefully consider all submissions we receive.
> 
> On behalf of the Working Group, thanks in advance for your time,
> 
> [names]
> 
> 
>   SKOS Use Case Questionnaire
>   ---------------------------
> 
>   Section 1. Vocabularies
> 
> In this section we ask you to provide some information about the 
> vocabulary or vocabularies you would like to be able to represent using 
> SKOS.
> 
> [N.B. if your use case describes a generic application of one or more 
> vocabularies and/or vocabulary mappings, skip straight to section 3.]
> 
> 1.1. What is the title of the vocabulary(ies)?
> 
> 1.2. (*) Please provide below some extracts from the vocabulary(ies). 
> Use the layout or presentation format that you would normally provide 
> for the users of the vocabulary(ies). Please ensure that the extracts 
> you provide illustrate all of the features of the vocabulary(ies).
> 
> 1.3. Describe the structure of the vocabulary(ies). What are the main 
> building blocks? What types of relationship are used? If you can, 
> provide examples by referring to the extracts given above.
> 
> 1.4. Is a machine-readable representation of the vocabulary(ies) already 
> available (e.g. as an XML document)? If so, we'd be grateful if you 
> could provide some example data or point us to a hyperlink.
> 
> 1.5. Are any software applications used to create and/or maintain the 
> vocabulary(ies)? Are there any features which these software 
> applications currently lack which are required by your use case?
> 
> 1.6. If a database application is used to store and/or manage the 
> vocabulary, how is the database structured?
> 
> 1.7. Were any published standards, textbooks or written guidelines 
> followed during the design and construction of the vocabulary? Did you 
> decide to diverge from their recommendations in any way, and if so, how 
> and why?
> 
> 1.8. How are changes to the vocabulary(ies) managed?
> 
> 1.9. Any additional information, references and/or hyperlinks.
> 
> 
>   Section 2. Vocabulary Mappings
> 
> In this section we ask you to provide some information about the 
> mappings or links between vocabularies you would like to be able to 
> represent using SKOS.
> 
> [N.B. if your use case does not involve vocabulary mappings or links 
> skip straight to section 3.]
> 
> 2.1. Which vocabularies are you linking/mapping from/to?
> 
> 2.2. (*) Please provide below some extracts from the mappings or links 
> between the vocabularies. Use the layout or presentation format that you 
> would normally provide for the users of the mappings. Please ensure that 
> the examples you provide illustrate all of the different types of 
> mapping or link.
> 
> 2.3. Describe the different types of mapping used, with reference to the 
> examples given above.
> 
> 2.4. Any additional information, references and/or hyperlinks.
> 
> 
>   Section 3. Application
> 
> In this section we ask you to provide some information about the 
> application for which the vocabulary(ies) and or vocabulary mappings are 
> being used.
> 
> 3.1. What is the title of the application?
> 
> 3.2. What is the general purpose of the application? What services does 
> it provide to the end-user?
> 
> 3.3. (*) Provide some examples of the functionality of the application. 
> Try to illustrate all of the functionalities in which the 
> vocabulary(ies) and/or vocabulary mappings are involved.
> 
> 3.4. What is the architecture of the application? What are the main 
> components? Are the components and/or the data distributed across a 
> network, or across the Web?
> 
> 3.5. Briefly desribe any non-trivial algorithms involved in the 
> processing of user actions, e.g. query expansion algorithms.
> 
> 3.6. Is the functionality associated with the controlled vocabulary(ies) 
> integrated in any way with functionalities provided by other means? (For 
> example, search and browse using a structured vocabulary might be 
> integrated with free-text searching and/or some sort of social 
> bookmarking or recommender system.)
> 
> 3.7. Any additional information, references and/or hyperlinks.
> 
> ---
> End of questionnaire, thanks again.
> 
> 
> 
> Alistair Miles wrote:
> 
>>
>> Hi Antoine,
>>
>> Antoine Isaac wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 2. Independance of vocabulary section with respect to functionality 
>>> section
>>> I think that from our SKOS perspective it's important to emphasize on 
>>> the vocabulary section for use case description. Even if you make the 
>>> point in [3] that application focus is crucial, SKOS is finally about 
>>> representing vocabularies. And I believe it's important for use case 
>>> providers that they can express their needs with respect to this core 
>>> aspect of their business. And therefore to do it in a section thay 
>>> can immediately identify.
>>
>>
>> How about if we divide a use case into two sections, a 
>> "vocabulary(ies)" section and an "application" section?
>>
>> The "vocabulary(ies)" section would come first, and be centred around 
>> extracts from one or more vocabularies.
>>
>> The "application" section would come second, and provide a description 
>> of a current or proposed application of the vocabulary(ies).
>>
>> If a vocab has already been described in another use case, then a 
>> submission could be "application-only" and refer to the previous use 
>> case where the vocabulary is described.
>>
>> We could indicate that we would accept "vocab-only" submissions, but 
>> encourage submissions that include an application.
>>
>>>
>>> 3. Link to ISO standards.
>>> Guus mentioned in [4] that we should link the use case to ISO 
>>> standards. I think we should encourage the contributors to do so, if 
>>> their case is already linked to it. I favor the addition of a 
>>> "(non)compliance with existing encoding/representational standards" 
>>> item in the vocabulary section. But I think we should mention the 
>>> fact that filling this item is not mandatory, some vocabularies being 
>>> developped outside of such considerations.
>>
>>
>> I think it's important that we encourage submissions to present 
>> extracts from their vocabulary(ies) according to whatever 
>> human-readable layout(s)/format(s) they already use within the given 
>> application (or intend to use within a planned application).
>>
>> I think it would be good to know if any particular standards or 
>> guidelines were followed in the construction, maintenance and/or 
>> presentation of the vocabularies. If a particular standard has been 
>> followed, we could also ask the submission to highlight if any 
>> decisions were made to diverge from the standard, why those decisions 
>> were made, and diverge in what way.
>>
>> However, note that ISO 2788 doesn't really define a notion of 
>> "compliance" or "conformance", and that there is plenty of room for 
>> interpretation within that standard - so asking whether a vocabulary 
>> "complies" with ISO 2788 may not give us much information.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Alistair.
>>
>

Received on Monday, 27 November 2006 11:41:17 UTC