RE: Proposal for Schema.org extension mechanism

Thanks Jim!

I was thinking I only need country identifiers for the moment (and not machine readable content when the URI is dereferenced), so using 'https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:XX' to identify countries in my datasets might very well be good enough.

I'll reply separately to Martin's fantastic response(s), but basically I'm sensing an opportunity here for Schema.org extensions to possibly fill a gap between the existing standards (like ISO, or the United Nations) and the Linked Data need for 'authoritative' reference data in RDF (like country identifiers for starters). If that gap could be filled, CEDS wouldn't need https://ceds.ed.gov/element/000050 anymore (except maybe to say 'owl:sameAs iso:Country'), and it wouldn't need to put the work into returning detailed RDF from that URI either (nor worry about keeping it's identifiers in-sync with a more widely recognised 'authority').

Thanks again, Pat.


From: Jim Goodell [mailto:jimgoodell@qi-partners.com]
Sent: 26 March 2015 17:39
To: McBennett, Pat; public-vocabs@w3.org
Subject: Re: Proposal for Schema.org extension mechanism

Pat,

CEDS has a URI reference for the ISO 2-digit codes, e.g. https://ceds.ed.gov/element/000050#IE for Ireland.
It does not (yet) have an element defining the ISO 3-digit country codes, and the URL when resolved does not (yet) return machine readable content such as RDF.

I think the the code could be referenced 'authoritatively' using the ISO site like this: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:IE  I guess it depends whether you just need an identifier or if you need the definition returned in a machine readable format when the URI is resolve.

jim

From: "McBennett, Pat" <McBennettP@DNB.com<mailto:McBennettP@DNB.com>>
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 1:04 PM
To: "public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>" <public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Proposal for Schema.org extension mechanism
Resent-From: <public-vocabs@w3.org<mailto:public-vocabs@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:05:33 +0000

I totally agree with Martin Hepp's comments. I've recently begun exactly the process Martin describes (i.e. defining 'Web ontologies / shared schemas'), and already I'm finding all 3 of his points are spot-on.

But I'd like to ask Martin - what form of mechanism does he think could work for '...tapping into the potential of the many, many interesting schemas and standards out there [...] without the need to channel those through the social and technical process of getting into schema.org core'?

As a very simple example - I'm currently trying to find an existing RDF schema or standard for International Country Codes, but one which is 'authoritative'. ISO was an obvious place to start, so I asked them if they could provide these codes as RDF (I can that they currently provide them as CSV, XML or XLS [1]). Their response:

Dear Pat,

We do not product any RDF formats, I am sorry.

Regards

So that means although there are ISO country codes in the public domain (e.g. IRL, or FRA, or USA), and of course I can use those codes freely, there are no 'official' URI's out there for those codes (that I'm aware of) - i.e. there is no 'http://www.iso.org/country/alpha-3/IRL' for Ireland. So unless I can presuade the ISO to mint these URI's for 'their' country codes (which I would see as ideal, since they are a recognised authority, but it seems unlikely in the sort term), what mechanism do I have to use standardised, authoritative (i.e. as opposed to crowdsourced Wikipedia (or DBPedia) URI identifiers for countries in my internal datasets? I could mint my own URI's for these country codes under my companies domain name, but that's hardly appropriate as we've no interest in being an authority on country code identifiers (and we'd have the maintanance overhead of trying to keep them in-sync with the 'real' ISO codes)...

Which is why I would have thought an extension to Schema.org might offer a good opportunity for this (since Schema.org has already become the de facto authority for lots of things!). But am I just being naïve somehow...?

Regards,

Pat.


[1] - http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes.htm



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