- From: Eric Prud'hommeaux <eric@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:44:23 -0400
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfpschneider@gmail.com>
- Cc: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>, Phil Archer <phila@w3.org>, semantic-web@w3.org
* Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> [2013-06-17 22:22-0700] > > On 06/17/2013 09:47 PM, David Booth wrote: > >On 06/17/2013 04:41 PM, Phil Archer wrote: > >>On 17/06/2013 06:26, David Booth wrote: > >>[..] > >>>For example, suppose the client application dereferences a URI and > >>>obtains a comma-separated-values (CSV) document. unless the client > >>>application knew how to interpret that file, it would not be able to > >>>make meaningful use of that data. > >> > >>Subject to W3C Member approval and other bits of process, we hope to > >>launch a WG to define exactly that in the near future (say Sept/Oct). > >>i.e. define a metadata format and association mechanisms with CSV so > >>that you can express row and column headings, data types and, I hope, > >>basic templating rules for turning string values into URIs but I'm not > >>sure that's in the charter (I'm thinking something like GREL > >>http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/wiki/GRELFunctions). That same > >>data could be used to generate other formats besides RDF (OData etc.) > > > >Excellent! If it allows CSV documents to be standards-based > >interpreted as RDF then it would be a perfect example of the fact > >that data does not have to *look* (overtly) like RDF to *be* RDF. > > > >David > > > > > Yeah, if the metadata is something like: > 1/ a column can either be the id for the node of the row (in which > case it must be an IRI column or a blank node id column) or be > related to the node by a given property, if there is no id column > then the nodes are blank nodes with no id; > 2/ each column is typed, either as an IRI, in which case a prefix > may be given to turn the string in the column into an IRI, or as a > blank node id, in which case the string is a blank node id local to > the table or local to the document depending on a flag, or as a > typed value, in which case the datatype IRI and optionally language > tag is given; and > 3/ each column says whether empty cells produce a value (or IRI or > blank node id) or not; > then CSV documents can be thought of as RDF. If that were written as "CREATE TABLE ...", we could rely on the RDB Direct Mapping <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdb-direct-mapping/> to say that the RDF representation of: Birthday name date Bob 1990-04-27 Sue 1997-04-20 is: <Birthday/name=Bob> <Birthday/name> "Bob" ; <Birthday/date> "1990-04-27"^^xsd:date . <Birthday/name=Sue> <Birthday/name> "Sue" ; <Birthday/date> "1997-04-20"^^xsd:date . > If a CSV document can include multiple CSV tables, then CSV > documents can even be reasonably efficient carriers of RDF. I've never seen a proposal for this, but mime/multipart might work well. > peter > > PS: What's left for the WG to do? declare victory? -- -ericP
Received on Tuesday, 18 June 2013 17:44:52 UTC