W3C

– DRAFT –
Data Shapes meeting 2025-06-09

09 June 2025

Attendees

Present
ajnelson-nist, bergos, David, elianaP, HolgerK, nicholascar, TallTed
Regrets
AndyS
Chair
nicholascar
Scribe
David

Meeting minutes

General discussion on timeline

nicholascar: what to do on remaining 24 core tickets + 4 sparql

Holger: 3 tickets on agenda are most important, others mainly editorial; can live without. Sparql mostly editorial, some prebinding q's to discuss with Andy
… potentially start on node expressions in Sept

<TallTed> core

<TallTed> SPARQL

nicholascar: focus on core; there has been interest in other work e.g. shacl UI but leave for now

HolgerK: node expressions is a next logical item to pick up; happy to become an editor and push this work to try finish by year end

HolgerK: shacl compact syntax are also waiting on core

nicholascar: what is the expected process on establishing community groups; while WG is in session?

HolgerK: potentially add label for "postponed" tickets in core and reevaluate later

bergos: on postponed tickets, there's one ticket I'd like to pick up number 192 i.e. not postpone

<elianaP> w3c/data-shapes#192

HolgerK: others can pick up issues/make PRs, not only editors

nicholascar: propose tickets without an assignee soon be changed to "postpone" status

PRs available for major SHACL Core features

PR 395 on issue 160 Allow lists at sh:class and sh:datatype

PR 399 on issue 172 -- support for sh:closed sh:ByTypes

HolgerK: problem with sh:closed, only can directly close props directly at shape, did not consider inheritance, walk hierarchies etc.
… PR adds third value for sh:closed, true/false/sh:ByTypes
… if value is ByTypes, system must walk hierarchy and look at classes in hierarchy

nicholascar: why named ByTypes?

HolgerK: because looks at types (rdf:type) first, then looks at subclass of, sh:node, and then target class triples

nicholascar: potentially there is a better name, to think about

bergos: more discusson on the current name in the ticket

issue 173 reification for sh:deactivated, sh:messsage and sh:severity

<TallTed> s/topic: PR 160/subtopic: PR 160/

HolgerK: can currently only declare message on single shape

<TallTed> s/Topic: PR 173/subtopic: PR 173/

HolgerK: same issue with deactivated. Reification now helps with this; for this triple specify activated etc.

ajnelson-nist: does reification help with deactivate property shape but it's solely named as a blank node

HolgerK: recommendation to always use IRIs for property shapes; and that people should add rdf:type for property shapes

RDF 1.2 support

bergos: older PR for adding support for RDF 1.2 triple terms PR 368
… all concerns addressed; what is status? HolgerK has approved

<TallTed> s|s/Topic: PR|s/topic: PR|g

nicholascar: one other reviewer on call, TallTed , any thoughts on PR

TallTed: haven't seen PR recently, will review in next day

nicholascar: is PR in agenda built off 368?

bergos: keen to hear who is interested, should we discuss these now?

nicholascar: any other agenda/other items to discuss prior?
… None; continue with RDF 1.2 discussion

bergos: use case of targeting within triple terms
… puts focus node on the triple term itself,
… can use sh:inversePath rdf:reifies to go into the shape
… other targeting concept: is it a reifier; as could have different targets.
… two different things that would need be added for the targets, first filter then validation.
… triple part out means. Focus node is triple term, and want to go out
… other way round is matching in to triple term. Triple part in, specify which parts of the triple term to match, then use same properties for target matching,

nicholascar: to summarise, is it, target triple term, then triples part in or out?
… are there systems / use cases with cascading sets of reification?

ajnelson-nist: can think of examples e.g. disputes "he said x she said y" going a few levels deep

TallTed: will not know real use until people start using more
… urge caution until we know how people use it more

nicholascar: are nested/cascading cases going to be complicated, can we make it any better

ajnelson-nist: can look at inverse path with zero or more as an example of difficult cases
… question on traverse out of triple term. Talks about ex:age, and a version. Where is the age in the example?

bergos: age is the focus node at the end, match triple term that is the subject Bob, match triple term, traverse out with predicate

bergos: David made proposal to create separate predicates; I wanted to avoid this, matching on triple term is a little "hidden" but better to keep path as main tool for traversing

nicholascar: so can use the triple part in / out ?

bergos: yes you could do this with a sequence path, not covered in current examples.

nicholascar: is it necessary to use sh:subject/sh:predicate/sh:object

<ajnelson-nist> https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#section-classicize-caveat

ajnelson-nist: would clash with RDF 1.2; they use ttSubject etc.

mgberg: they only use this for classicising

elianaP: to clarify example; version is tied to the predicate, not the triple term?

bergos: versioning ontologies as an example, can version predicates

elianaP: clarifying for example, so e.g. age works the same way in version 1 & 2 so can be used

nicholascar: q to mgberg ttSubject etc. can not be used, wrong purpose?

mgberg: would need to check, not clear intention of spec

bergos: we need the predicate and the class as a value e.g. sh:predicate sh:Predicate; can cause issues if mixing namespaces e.g. rdf & rdfs

<mgberg> https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#section-classicize-definition

nicholascar: if the purpose of inventing the predicates in the 1.2 namespace was not for this, perhaps other spec authors should reconsider or tell us why it might be wrong

mgberg: idea is to take something in 1.2 and put it into 1.0 graph; notes on round tripping, there are caveats
… conceptually they are close

nicholascar: as thought experiment, how to query for this in sparql if not using SPARQL 1.2 syntax

nicholascar: how many new things: target triple term, is reifier, in & out (+ classes)?

bergos: isReifier is not absolutely necessary, others yes all required for traversal

nicholascar: is there a single concept that would combine in/out

bergos: yes could use single property with qualifier, but think better not to

<TallTed> we're over time.... we should strive to end 5 minutes before the hour, as all w3c calls are encouraged to do

bergos: quite used to the in out style, not sure if there's an easier way to define it. No strong opinion on naming but think the basic structure is good

elianaP: lets try to include less esp. in relation to triple terms, go for simplicity

mgberg: core PRs or issues, go ahead and make PR, is this procedure?

nicholascar: yes claim core and sparql PRs

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 244 (Thu Feb 27 01:23:09 2025 UTC).

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Succeeded: s/Topic: PR 160/Topic: PR 395 on issue 160

Succeeded: i/problem with sh:closed/topic: PR 399 on issue 172 -- support for sh:closed sh:ByTypes

Succeeded: s/topic: PR 399/subtopic: PR 399/

Failed: s/topic: PR 160/subtopic: PR 160/

Failed: s/Topic: PR 173/subtopic: PR 173/

Succeeded: s/Topic: PR 395/subtopic: PR 395/

Succeeded: i/Allow lists at sh:class/topic: PRs available for major SHACL Core features/

Failed: s|s/Topic: PR|s/topic: PR|g

Warning: ‘i/Topic: General discussion on timeline/agenda: https://github.com/w3c/data-shapes/blob/agenda/admin/agenda-2025-06-09.md’ interpreted as inserting ‘agenda: https://github.com/w3c/data-shapes/blob/agenda/admin/agenda-2025-06-09.md’ before ‘Topic: General discussion on timeline’

Succeeded: i/Topic: General discussion on timeline/agenda: https://github.com/w3c/data-shapes/blob/agenda/admin/agenda-2025-06-09.md

Maybe present: Holger, mgberg

All speakers: ajnelson-nist, bergos, elianaP, Holger, HolgerK, mgberg, nicholascar, TallTed

Active on IRC: ajnelson-nist, bergos, David, elianaP, HolgerK, mgberg, nicholascar, TallTed