please review: draft W3C SWIG Note 'Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets' (voiD)

Dear Semantic Web Interest Group,

As you might recall, semantic-web@w3.org is the home list of W3C's
Semantic Web Interest Group. Unlike other more industrious groups we
exist primarily as a discussion forum. However, occasionally some of
us get together and collaborate, and these collaborations can give
rise to W3C Notes (eg. from a while back, http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfcal/
). So, several SWIG members have been collaborating (in an open and
public way) on something called 'voiD', and have produced a draft of a
SWIG Note, details below. The voiD work addresses issues around RDF
dataset description and discovery, and I'm very pleased to propose it
as a W3C SWIG Note.

We don't have a very rigid process for these notes, but they are
useful to do, and we should perhaps do them more often.  I've asked
the voiD team to give a brief outline of the work, and we suggest a
deadline of end of January 2011 for feedback comments. There is a
snapshot 'Editor's Draft' for review in SWIG space at W3C [8] below,
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/interest/void/ and discussion is welcomed
here on semantic-web@w3.org

So thanks to Keith Alexander, Richard Cyganiak, Michael Hausenblas,
Jun Zhao for their hard work on all this, and to you all in advance
for your reviews and feedback. Assuming no major issues are found, we
should be able to proceed with publishing it as a W3C Note during
February.

cheers,

Dan



Please find below the voiD SWIG Note submission:

===
The 'Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets' (voiD) is an RDF-Schema vocabulary
for expressing metadata about RDF datasets. With voiD, the discovery and
usage of Linked Datasets can be performed both effectively and efficiently.
A dataset is a collection of data, published and maintained by a single
provider, available as RDF, and accessible, for example through
dereferenceable HTTP URIs or a SPARQL endpoint.

The development of voiD started in mid 2008, with a first version of the
vocabulary and guide published in 01/2009 [1]. Since then, voiD has enjoyed
considerable uptake in the Linked Data community and beyond, with usage
throughout from data.gov.uk to individual datasets [2].

A number of voiD-based implementations is available via [3]. The development
of the core voiD vocabulary and the guide is an open process with a
dedicated mailing list [4] and issue tracker [5].

W3C-wise, voiD is relevant for the work in the SPARQL WG [6] as well as the
upcoming eGov WG [7].

We hereby submit the Editor'sDraft 'Describing Linked Datasets with the voiD
Vocabulary' [8] to W3C's Semantic Web Interest Group (SWIG) with the goal to
publish it as a W3C Interest Group Note. We appreciate feedback on this draft
till 31 Jan 2011 via the 'semantic-web@w3.org' mailing list.

Cheers,
       the voiD 'Editors Team':
       Keith Alexander, Richard Cyganiak, Michael Hausenblas, Jun Zhao

[1] http://vocab.deri.ie/void/guide/2009-01-29
[2] http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/lodcloud/state/#data-set-level-metadata
[3] http://semanticweb.org/wiki/VoiD
[4] http://groups.google.com/group/void-discussion
[5] http://code.google.com/p/void-impl/issues/
[6] http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-service-description/
[7] http://www.w3.org/2011/govdata/charter
[8] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/interest/void/
===

Received on Thursday, 16 December 2010 14:36:14 UTC