W3C

– DRAFT –
Spatial Data on the Web Coverage Subgroup Teleconference

10 May 2017

Meeting Minutes

<billroberts> https://‌www.w3.org/‌2015/‌spatial/‌wiki/‌Patent_Call

[Bill goes through the Patent Call]

<billroberts> https://‌www.w3.org/‌2017/‌04/‌26-sdwcov-minutes

<billroberts> approve last minutes?

[No objections to previous minutes]

<billroberts> +1

<sam_toyer> +1

Bill: Main purpose of the meeting is to review remaining blockers on our specifications.
… Objective is to have final versions of everything by the end of May.
… June would be available for the rest of the Working Group to give additional comments
… End of June is when the group is expected to close.
… So 3 weeks to have everything finished
… Let's go through the documents one by one.

CovJSON

Bill: First Public Working Draft of Overview of Coverage JSON Format document published yesterday.
… Now question is: what needs to be added on top of that for completion?
… One open question is whether the actual CoverageJSON specification stays external or goes within that specification.
… The last time we talked about that was at Delft. Jon was not around.
… Jon, want to summarize your views on that?

Jon: There's been an on-going discussion about whether the Note should include the entire CoverageJSON spec.
… Phil was keen on that, partly because it makes IP considerations more transparent.
… Also for completeness.
… The reasons why I was reluctant to do that: 1/ The note as it stands is reasonably concised and clear to people I hope. The specification itself is rather long. That would turn the document in a rather longer missive.
… 2/ we would then end up with 2 copies of the specification. The canonical version in GitHub and the version in the Note.
… They would become out of sync in the future, quite likely.
… In previous conversations on the subject, Scott Simmons from OGC suggested a mechanism which sounded like a good way to progress that specification towards a standard in a relatively lightweight way.
… With that in mind, that would end up publishing yet another document from that group.
… Mechanism is called OGC standard incubating program.
… That seems to be like the right way forward.
… Now that we've lost Maik, we don't want to be engaged in something heavy process-wise.

Bill: Do you have a feel for how far the CoverageJSON spec is final?

Jon: I'd say around 90%. A couple of issues to address, a couple of features that we need to consider.

Bill: You reckon that the OGC incubating process would be the right process.

Jon: Yes, I think so.
… The greatest interest in this thing will be more in the OGC than in the W3C.
… Therefore I'm sort of leaning towards that as a mechanism to gather more inputs.
… I also think that in terms of promotion, I would do so in the OGC and INSPIRE communities more than in the W3C community.
… The most reassuring standard for people for me would be an OGC standard.

<Zakim> phila, you wanted to talk about https://‌philarcher1.github.io/‌sdw/‌jwoc/

Jon: I hope there's still a way to interest the Web community

Phil: I started to draft a charter for a JWOC group. One of the things that I put in there is CoverageJSON.
… If you want me to take that out, I will.
… If you feel that you don't need W3C, then so be it.

Jon: That's a distortion of what I said, I think.

Phil: This feels like you're in a group with two SDOs and rejecting one.

Bill: JWOC is new, it would be good to get a bit more of context as to where it comes from. Based on discussions we had, it's not in any way a rejection of W3C.

Phil: I think it's a domain working group in OGC. It's an Interest Group in W3C. It cannot publish standards but it can publish Notes.
… That would give you a way to carry on in both SDOs up to the Note level.
… And then if you need more formalization, we can create a Working Group to publish that as a standard.
… That joint approach sounds to me very useful.
… It can go to stable notes under both organizations. If the group gets created, we can take the CoverageJSON document further along.

Jon: OK, I was not aware of this. I will consider it. I was not trying to reject W3C at all, just reflecting on the fact that the community that shows the most interest is around OGC for now.
… We have limited funds to work on this project as well.
… This joint group certainly looks interesting. I will appreciate a chat with Scott as well.

Phil: Do you foresee a time in the future where it will be ready for standardisation?
… Maybe a year or two.

Jon: I hope so. It depends on finding resources as well.
… I do have wider interest of course, but it's tough to get involved in all the different strands of the group. Having a focus is important for us.

Phil: The charter I drafted so far mainly takes the work from the SDW WG.

Jon: And we need to look at crossover between CoverageJSON, EO-QB and QB4ST, so it's good to have them under the same group.
… At the same time, it means investing more time, which I cannot easily do.

Bill: The JWOC would be opened to any OGC and W3C organization as in the Spatial Data on the Web WG?

Phil: Yes, rules would be the same.
… I'm hoping that, by the end of next month, there will be a press release about achievements so far.
… About future collaboration, I talk to Denise. For actual standards, Scott is the right person.

Jon: Maybe I should take an action to get in touch with Scott to discuss this group and the right way forward for CoverageJSON.

Bill: Please do that, Jon.
… The JWOC seems to offer the best of both worlds.
… It provides access to OGC, with W3C on top.

Action: blower to talk to Scott about future of CoverageJSON, perhaps in spec incubation WG; cf. JWOC etc.

<trackbot> Created ACTION-358 - Talk to scott about future of coveragejson, perhaps in spec incubation wg; cf. jwoc etc. [on Jon Blower - due 2017-05-17].

Jon: One thing I'll be looking at is to get OGC interest in some of these discussions. There's a process involved to join the group, no matter how lightweight.
… Just trying to get the whole community engaged with as low a barrier as possible.

Bill: It may be the case for Denise and Scott to explain the benefits of this group.

Jon: Right, just to drop all barriers for a time-limited community to be easily engaged.

<phila> phila: Yep, sounds right, Bill

Bill: Back to the Note that we will publish in the group, it would be good to decide by end of May what next steps we envision so that we can explain it in the Introduction.
… "If we're saying that specification is still evolving, here is the planned route".

Phil: I'm not sure we'll know about the JWOC by then, but that's the right approach otherwise.

Bill: In the document, there are a couple of issues that remain. Adding references I'm happy to take a look at.

Action: Bill to add references to CoverageJSON document

<trackbot> Created ACTION-359 - Add references to coveragejson document [on Bill Roberts - due 2017-05-17].

Bill: The question of illustrations

Jon: I think I'm the one who raised that question. I can take that action to run that off.
… I note also a new section about Relationship to Best Practices

Bill: Yes, it's been added next to the F2F in Delft.
… I will look into it. I was waiting for the Best Practices document to become more stable.

Jon: If you're able to do a first pass, that's great, I can review that afterwards.

Bill: And then there's issue 101 that remains.

Jon: On me. I had ambitions that may not be easy to meet with current time constraints, but I'll do something.
… One bit of the document which is probably more relevant to the rest of the group is section 3.6
… about converting CoverageJSON to RDF
… If people could review and comment that section, I think that would be good.

Bill: It might be worth sending a quick email to the mailing-list

Action: Jon to seek feedback from the group about section 3.6 after next series of edits

<trackbot> Created ACTION-360 - Seek feedback from the group about section 3.6 after next series of edits [on Jon Blower - due 2017-05-17].

EO-QB

<sam_toyer> https://‌anu-linked-earth-data.github.io/‌sdw/‌eo-qb/

Sam: It's almost finished

<sam_toyer> https://‌github.com/‌w3c/‌sdw/‌pull/‌742

Sam: A bit of tidy up may need to be done, for instance if SSN changes some names
… Also a question on timestamp vs. duration

phil: Is there a dependency on Kerry? Is it possible to make progress without Kerry?

Sam: Yes to both questions.
… The first thing we can resolve now is around the SSN prefix.

Phil: I know that she wanted to do some stuff on EO-QB. Not sure if she managed to do that before going offline.

Bill: Among the rest of the group, we should be able to gather feedback on most of these things
… Sam, if you cannot think of the right person to ask, please come back to the group.

Sam: I'm sure we'll be able to find someone who can answer these questions, typically Armin for SSN questions.

Bill: Anyway, nice work, seems on schedule.

Action: Sam to address all the remaining issues about EO-QB in next pull request

<trackbot> Created ACTION-361 - Address all the remaining issues about eo-qb in next pull request [on Sam Toyer - due 2017-05-17].

QB4ST

Bill: That's essentially Rob's work.
… The main thing outstanding on that is to produce an example.
… Typically from the CoverageJSON material, to see if I can express that.
… Will follow up with Rob offline

Francois: Note pending pull request

https://‌github.com/‌w3c/‌sdw/‌pull/‌696

Francois: Now merged. Also, reading the document, I note that there is no clear distinction between parts that define concepts and parts that use them in examples. I will submit a pull request to improve this.

Bill: OK.
… The document should be on track to be finished by end of May.

Jon: Side note that Chris Little made a lot of useful comments to improve the FPWD of the CovJSON document. I will integrate them.

<billroberts> bye!

Summary of Action Items

  1. blower to talk to Scott about future of CoverageJSON, perhaps in spec incubation WG; cf. JWOC etc.
  2. Bill to add references to CoverageJSON document
  3. Jon to seek feedback from the group about section 3.6 after next series of edits
  4. Sam to address all the remaining issues about EO-QB in next pull request

Summary of Resolutions

Minutes formatted by Bert Bos's scribe.perl version 2.18 (2017/03/20 18:51:04), a reimplementation of David Booth's scribe.perl. See CVS log.