RE: ISSUE-39 (whyDistributionSubclasses): dcat:Distribution and its subclasses are unnecessary [dcat]

Hi,

dcat:Feed and dcat:WebService looked interesting because although they are not directly downloadable files but still can be accessed in an automated way. 
While feeds "can be handled by media types and web architecture" easily, web service might needs further description to be associated with some resource.

Some tools/users might be interested in all datasets that have a feed distribution... having this information explicitly represented enable such a query easily...

Additionally, It is quite common for catalogs to have a dataset available as XLS format for example without a direct download link (a user has to first accept some terms & conditions or go through some wizard-like interface...) the two pieces of information (the URL and the format) need a resource to be associated with (which is an instance of Distribution). Now if this dataset has another distribution (in XML for example), properties alone (2 download and 2 format) are not sufficient as you still need to know how they should be grouped together.

Comments/ideas?

Regards,
Fadi
-----Original Message-----
From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of eGovernment Interest Group Issue Tracker
Sent: 27 May 2010 15:42
To: public-egov-ig@w3.org
Subject: ISSUE-39 (whyDistributionSubclasses): dcat:Distribution and its subclasses are unnecessary [dcat]


ISSUE-39 (whyDistributionSubclasses): dcat:Distribution and its subclasses are unnecessary [dcat]

http://www.w3.org/egov/IG/track/issues/39


Raised by: Ed Summers
On product: dcat

Raised by Ed Summers:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-egov-ig/2010May/0056.html


To some extent I'm not convinced that dcat:Distribution and its subclasses are really necessary. An alternate approach would be two have two different properties for linking a dcat:Dataset to an a web resource: dcat:download (for direct download) and dcat:downloadInfo (or something else, for going to a page that describes how to download)...and let the rest be handled by media types and web architecture. To some extent you can see this principle at work in the notes currently in Catalog Record:

"""
@@@ in web-based catalogs, the URL of the catalog page should be used as URI for the catalog record if it is a permalink.
"""

Received on Tuesday, 1 June 2010 14:15:27 UTC