rudimentary EARL validator using RDF Shape Expressions

Hi folks,

Ref: http://w3.org/brief/Mzgy

I was playing around with "RDF Shape Expressions" [1], which seems to 
(finally) provide the capability to write logical rules (constraints) 
that we previously tried to do with OWL and RIF (without success).
  - [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/ShEx

Using EricP's ShEx Demo I was able to build a very rudimentary EARL 
validator that shows a possibility of using this new technology. Note 
that the Demo and all RDF processing is fully client-based as well.

Of course, the basic set of rules that I created have several caveats:

#1. It does not (yet) validate nodes of the supplementary EARL modules 
HTTP-in-RDF, Content-in-RDF, and Pointers-in-RDF;

#2. It assumes description fields are XML Literals though they could 
also be XSD Strings - this actually doesn't seem to be very clearly 
defined in DC, FOAF, and DOAP, which is a bit of an issue;

#3. Languages for strings and literals are not being considered which 
can lead to false positives in the validator;

#4. The validator only reports matches rather than non-matches, which is 
a consequence of using this particular Demo.


I encourage you to have a look at RDF Shape Expressions. I think that 
with a refined set of rules and some test cases we could propose solid 
"exit criteria" for a W3C Candidate Recommendation stage for EARL 1.0.

Best,
   Shadi

-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
Activity Lead, W3C/WAI International Program Office
Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG)
Research and Development Working Group (RDWG)

Received on Monday, 11 August 2014 06:40:23 UTC