Talk:BP Consolidation

Discussion on Use Case consolidation

• topics from the Linking Geospatial Data conference:
  • how and where should we implement topological functions?
  • geometries expressed as WKT literals are large objects — the Linked data world is used to handling simple literals
  • how do we help developers handle (or avoid) the steep learning curve to work with Linked Data?
  • how do I know which data models (ontologies) to use when publishing my data?

• from SDW WG call, 22-Jul-2015:
  • [Frans]
    • [Linked Spatial data on the Web] is still hard to do. Just publishing metadata is now more or less possible, especially if you look at the Geo_DCAT AP
    • One story I'd like to see as a publisher is how you publish metadata about spatial datasets that might be useful to a WMS, WFS etc. The immediate advantage would be that the data would be crawlable and discoverable.
      • ¿[jtandy] interprets this as meaning that a dataset is published (presumably with a URI) and that the content of that dataset is made available via one or more service end-points (of which WMS and WFS are examples)?
  • [joshlieberman]
    • I'd like to mention some work being done to catalogue WMSs. The biggest problem is having links to services that provide spatial data. For example, there may be links to map images or features in their Web pages, but going from that to the service is hard/impossible. Decent metadata would help there. That for me is the biggest challenge.
  • ...
  • [SimonCox]
    • I was trying to tease out the tension between the Josh and Ed cases. My sense is that it's between continuous datasets when any request is a query cf. a set of stores. We know that Web crawlers are good at following a finite set of links but they're not good at making sense of a DB where an infinite number of queries can be made
    • "Linked data does not play nice with queries"
  • [eparsons] notes the need to cover a spectrum of data publishers; "Think village fête not Starbucks" (the latter has a sophisticated GIS)
  • ...
    • [jtandy] how does one link to individual resources within a dataset?
    • [jtandy] interprets the discussion as looking at the relationship between the service end-points (and APIs that those end-points support) and the resources themselves- either datasets or the things that the datasets describe. There's a complexity about exposing a resource with a rich data model through a service which provides one or more simple APIs (necessarily simple so that they are usable!) ... I see an emerging requirement about exposing data through "convenience APIs" that meet the needs of a specific set of actors. WMS, WFS with Stored Queries, WCS and APIs created via the Linked Data API are examples of this approach. WFS with its complex Query Expressions is similar to SPARQL in that it provides a rich and fully-featured query language that require a consumer to fully understand the underlying data model before a query can be constructed. There is a need to shortcut this process by providing "convenience APIs" that allow consumers to get at the bits they need for common activities.
  • ...
  • [Alejandro_Llaves] "If I develop a [client application exposing] spatial data, it would be good to know which encoding [the spatial data] follows rather than checking all possibilities"; e.g. geoSPARQL, something else
    • [phila] suggests dcterms:conformsTo
  • ...
  • [Frans] "I'm going to Naples in a few weeks. When I go somewhere strange, I want to know about my surroundings, so [...] How do you [...] find everything relevant to me near where I am?"
  • ...
  • [Rachel] suggests that use cases regarding publishing of scientific data (which is often published in tables) could form a common narrative
    • [joshlieberman] "Another issue is moving between links and tables - e.g. finding / following a link and retrieving a table that includes data like that linked to for further analysis."
    • [jtandy] interprets this discussion as being interested in expressing/following the links between datasets (and between the resources described in those datasets) ... the essential "webbyness" of data on the web

• discussed at SDW WG call, 29-Jul-2015
  • [kerry] "I am a publisher of other data (non-spatial, e.g. national statistical data which is typically aggregated over or refers somehow to spatial regions of some type). I want to link that essentially aspatial data to the elsewhere-published geometries and all kinds of other stuff about the places inside that geometry. I want somebody using my data to have ready access to all that other stuff published by other groups."
  • ... this is a brief interpretation of an active goal in the UN GGIM Expert Group
  • ... the emphasis here is a data provider wanting to connect aspatial information to spatial concepts; e.g. statistical information on crime figures with administrative geographies