W3C

SWD WG

22 May 2007

Agenda

See also: IRC log

Attendees

Present
Bern, berrueta, aliman, TomB, Vit, antoine, Daniel, +31.20.420.aabb
Regrets
Sean, Ralph, Jon, Michael
Chair
Tom
Scribe
Bern

Contents


admin

TomB: propose we accept minutes of 15th May telecon
... been through minutes and look OK to me

Resolved: accept minutes of 15th May meeting

<TomB> http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/39408/f2f3poll1/

<scribe> ACTION: TomB to start questionnaire on date for f2f -- options are weeks of Nov 4 and Nov 11 [DONE] [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action01]

SKOS

<TomB> ACTION: Daniel to send messages to thesaurus list, Semantic Web Interest, ... requesting feedback on the new SKOS use cases document [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action01] [DONE]

<TomB> ACTION: Jon and Alistair: Move SKOS issues over from Sandbox to Tracker on an ongoing basis [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/08-swd-minutes.html#action10] [CONTINUES]

<TomB> ACTION: Sean to look at the test environment supporting the SKOS semantics [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action05] [CONTINUES]

<TomB> ACTION: Alistair will look at raising the examples from the issues to test cases [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action06] [CONTINUES]

<TomB> ACTION: Guus revise his ISSUE-26 proposal to account for other options [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action07] [CONTINUES]

TomB: was talking with Guus just before the meeting and expects to see output from Guus in next few days wrt ISSUE-26 proposal

<TomB> http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/31

TomB: Alistair suggests we open basic lexical label sematics at same time as issue 26

<scribe> ACTION: chairs to open issue 31 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action07]

Alistair: doesn't this issue need an owner?
... meant to have its status as open, so that it's on the agenda

TomB: asks for volunteer to have owner of the issue?

Alistair: I'm willing if no one is desperately keen

TomB: are there any other steps that need to be taken?

Alistair: change the status in the tracker
... I'll do that

<scribe> ACTION: open issue 31 in tracker for discussion next week [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action08]

TomB: issue 33--grouping constructs

<aliman> --done

TomB: we had discussion last week, but now a 3rd proposal from Antoine
... goal of discussion today is to see if we have a rough concensus so that we can move towards having a proposal
... to vote on in next week's call. Guus felt that we should try to move this forward
... to some sort of resolution.
... calls on Antoine to put forward proposal 3.

Antoine: my proposal was based on the diagnosis that the issue comes from
... the fact that two axioms are contradictory
... I suggested to release the axioms that define the domain and range of the relationships
... and to introduce a new class that would be a superclass of concept and collection

Bernard: familiar object-oriented pattern from gang of four. (e.g. common pattern in widgetry) called composite pattern ... sub-class which is also a component and a collection of components ...

<aliman> http://www.exciton.cs.rice.edu/JavaResources/DesignPatterns/composite.htm

Alistair: number of issues with this proposal wrt semantic relationships
... in the current guide there's a rule called "collectable properties" which was supposed to
... enable your to infer the direct semantic relationships
... other issues are that if you are doing query expansion, when you have
... a collection that has a node in the expansion graph, so you can artificially include

<TomB> [collectable properties http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-guide/#seccollectable]

Alistair: extra distance between the concepts
... also you couldn't write an application that has no knowledge of collections
... every application would have to have knowledge of collections
... different to minimal fixed proposal, which means you don't need any inference rule
... and doesn't need any knowledge of collections

Bernard: what's significance of not knowing about collections?

Alistair: really simple query expansion doesn't need any collection stuff but guaranteed to work
... with SKOS data
... For example, if you take a look at the NSDL metadata repository, there is no
... collection stuff, but it is nevertheless a very useful platform. If we went for
... Antoine's proposal then an application like that would have to implement the collection
... stuff--it wouldn't work without it.

TomB: in W3C practice the proposal that has the least impact on an existing spec is the one that gets favoured
... In last week's discussion it seemed to me that we were leaning towards the
... minimal fixed proposal. Does anyone want to add to that?

Alistair: I agree with what Guus said. I like the minimal fixed proposal because it does
... the smallest fix and takes an incremental approach. We can take the approach
... and then explore issues with it. If there's a problem with it, then we can take a look
... at other proposals (such as the relaxing domain/range or the Bundle)

<TomB> +1 Alistair and Guus favoring Minimal Fix

Antoine: my worry is that in most of the situations where we have seen collections
... the collections are included in the hierarchy.

Alistair: there's a difference between a conceptual hierarchy and a systematic display
... the latter is a visual arrangement of terms, not really part of what standards people ... would call a conceptual hierarchy.
... node labels are introduced as a display convenience.
... In the minimal fixed proposal, let's say you're generating a systematic display
... such as kinds of milk. In a minimal fix, you declare a concept of milk, then goat's
... milk, cow's milk and express narrower terms between them. Then itroducce a collection
... say "milk by source animal". An application that gets that data can ignore the
... collection data and just display the relationships between kinds of milk.
... whereas an application that understands collections can ask if (say) cow's milk
... a member of any collections?
... and then recurse upwards, to see if the "milk by source animal" collection is also in a collection?

Daniel: I'm confused by what's asserted by collection membership and the siblings of a taxonomy

Alistair: collections are not just siblings. You could have "milk by source animal", and "milk by fat content"
... if you're actually thinking about classes, then "milk by source animal" is not really a class.
... in the thesaurus community, "milk by source animal" is not a concept, it's a node label

Daniel: but the ontology community wouldn't use this approach.

Alistair: the dependency of how we model this and how we migrate from thesaurus to ontologies
... the primary concern for SKOS is to make sure that it is sufficient to represent thesauri and classification schemes
... so that existing thesauri and classification schemes can continue to have the features
... they're used to.

Daniel: we also have to do the same from an ontology-oriented perspective

Alistair: I am aware of Antoine's point about the difficulty of implementing the algorithm
... I explain the algorithm to follow the narrower links, then recursive collection-membership relationships
... there's another standardisation group (in the UK) that's trying to write down a data model (in UML) for thesauri
... this group is having a big discussion about you handle collections (aka Arrays)

Daniel: anticipate resolution from this group?

Alistair: they're influenced by how SKOS does it.
... they're not hardcore data modellers.
... we'd have to present it in UML for them to understand.

Daniel: that might be useful for us to present it anyhow.

Alistair: because the UK group is doing it as a closed group it's not that public

Daniel: so it presents some interesting questions about how to map from SKOS to their data model

Alistair: I made a suggestion. Here's the link

<aliman> http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/blogs/alistair/archives/41 -> Initial suggestion of data model for thesauri for BS8723

Alistair: the idea that I had was that we go with the minimal fixed proposal for now
... which forces me to expand on the algorithm

<TomB> +1 to go with Minimal Fix

Alistair: and if it's too complicated then we can change our minds. It's not the final word.

TomB: does anyone disagree with minimal fix?

Daniel: concern that we also need to address from ontology world

Alistair: need use cases to understand this better

TomB: sounds like we're moving to minimal fix with reservation that we need to understand
... how ontologies map to thesauri.
... so could we put minimal fix on agenda for next week.

Alistair: yes, then we could resolve or not next week

<scribe> ACTION: Alistair to propose minimal fix for resolution of issue 33 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action09]

TomB: to be talked about next week
... propose SKOS issue resolution process to next week

<TomB> http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/IssuesProcess

TomB: also want to make sure that the document on the issues process actually corrresponds to the way we are doing things
... find it slightly confusing about how to see issues that are closed

<Antoine> ... beware of not losing it!

<scribe> ACTION: Ralph propose resolution to Recipe issue 1.3 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action09] [CONTINUES]

<scribe> ACTION: Elisa to provide outline of work to be done by Apr 17 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action11] [CONTINUES]

Meeting adjourned

Summary of Action Items

[NEW] ACTION: Alistair to propose minimal fix for resolution of issue 33 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action09]
[NEW] ACTION: chairs to open issue 31 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action07]
[NEW] ACTION: open issue 31 in tracker for discussion next week [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action08]
 
[PENDING] ACTION: Alistair will look at raising the examples from the issues to test cases [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action06]
[PENDING] ACTION: Elisa to provide outline of work to be done by Apr 17 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action11]
[PENDING] ACTION: Guus revise his ISSUE-26 proposal to account for other options [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action07]
[PENDING] ACTION: Jon and Alistair: Move SKOS issues over from Sandbox to Tracker on an ongoing basis [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/08-swd-minutes.html#action10]
[PENDING] ACTION: Ralph propose resolution to Recipe issue 1.3 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/04/24-swd-minutes.html#action09]
[PENDING] ACTION: Sean to look at the test environment supporting the SKOS semantics [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action05]
 
[DONE] ACTION: Daniel to send messages to thesaurus list, Semantic Web Interest, ... requesting feedback on the new SKOS use cases document [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/15-swd-minutes.html#action01]
[DONE] ACTION: TomB to start questionnaire on date for f2f -- options are weeks of Nov 4 and Nov 11 [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/05/22-swd-minutes.html#action01]
 
[End of minutes]