Re: Proposal: Looking inside tables

Attached is a new version of the proposal that uses SetOf as a way to
declare table annotations explicitly (in the HTML mark-up as well as in
JSON-LD)

@Markus we also considered explicit manipulation of tables in an earlier
version of this proposal. I'll try to explain why we went with the current
approach:

If you look at the examples towards the bottom of the document, you'll see
that for the more complex cases, the directionality of the mappings is
different: instead of mapping from table columns to properties of a type,
we map from the type and its properties (sometimes with nesting) to columns
/ patterns. This is more expressive, as the graph schema structured can be
nested, while the table structure is flat.

Mapping from the type structure to the table columns with an explicit table
layer becomes quite heavy, as you first need to define the tables and their
columns, then the type/property structure with references to the columns.

I think the current approach with explicit SetOf is a nice trade-off
between simplicity and expressiveness.

Thanks,
-Omar



On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Markus Lanthaler
<markus.lanthaler@gmx.net>wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 8:32 PM, Stéphane Corlosquet wrote:
> > From the proposal:
> >
> > <table typeof="Painting" vocab="http://schema.org/">
> >   <thead>
> >     <tr>
> >       <th property="image">Image</th>
> >       <th property="name">Title</th>
> >       <th property="dateCreated">Year</th>
> >       <th>Technique</th>
> >       <th>Dimensions</th>
> >       <th property="contentLocation">Gallery</th>
> >     </tr>
> >   </thead>
> > <tbody>...</tbody>
> > </table>
> >
> > It should be noted that parsers which are not aware of this table
> > extension would generate this information:
> >
> > <>
> >    rdf:type schema:Painting;
> >    schema:image "Image";
> >    schema:name "Title";
> >    schema:dateCreated "Year";
> >    schema:contentLocation "Gallery" .
> >
> > How do you plane to cope with this situation? Leave it be? Would it
> > have unintended consequences on some applications?
>
> Thanks Stéphane, I was going to ask the same question. I think the problem
> is even more apparent if you look at the JSON-LD examples in the draft:
>
> {
>   "@context": "http://schema.org/",
>   "@type": "Painting",
>   "dateCreated" : "{http://wp.org/rembrandt-paintings.csv#col:Year}",
>   "contentLocation" : "{http://wp.org/rembrandt-paintings.csv#col:Gallery
> }",
>   "author": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt"
> }
>
> Why not define something which is a bit more explicit at the price of
> being a bit more verbose? Something like
>
> {
>   "@context": "http://schema.org/"
>     "rp" : "http://wp.org/rembrandt-paintings.csv#"
>   },
>   "@type": "Table",   ----- in lack of a better name
>   "columnDefinitions": [
>     {
>       "@id": "rp:col:Title",
>       "mapsTo": "http://schema.org/name" -- can also be abbrev. to "name"
>     },
>     {
>       "@id": "rp:col:Year",
>       "mapsTo": "dateCreated"
>     {
>       "@id": "rp:col:Gallery",
>       "mapsTo": "contentLocation"
>     {
>       "constants": {
>         "@type": "Painting",
>         "author": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt"
>       }
>     }
>   ]
> }
>
> Or in HTML
>
> <table typeof="Table" vocab="http://schema.org/">
>   <thead rel="columnDefinitions">
>     <tr>
>       <th about="#image" property="mapsTo"
> resource="schema:image">Image</th>
>       <th about="#title" property="mapsTo"
> resource="schema:name">Title</th>
>       <th about="#year" property="mapsTo"
> resource="schema:dateCreated">Year</th>
> ...
>
>
> Cheers,
> Markus
>
>
> --
> Markus Lanthaler
> @markuslanthaler
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Omar Benjelloun | benjello@google.com | (415) 845-8516