How to make progress on syntax and metamodel?

Arnaud, others,

given the rather uneventful meeting today, I wonder how we are supposed 
to make progress on the urgent matters. Proposal 4 has significantly 
delayed a resolution on the metamodel discussion that has now been 
dragging on since October. Many long-overdue edits and clarifications 
are blocked by this, and so are most of the succeeding actions such as 
test cases, implementations and user feedback.

If things continue at the current pace, we'll still be explaining 
Peter's proposal to WG members in a month from now. This is a very 
important and very technical topic that cannot be adequately covered by 
a few superficial examinations during a couple of phone calls, 
especially if during these phone calls some claims are made and there is 
no way to respond to them.

I voted -1 to further examining Peter's proposal because I have already 
spent at least three full working days on it and have seen enough. 
Instead I have extracted some worthwhile discussion topics and moved 
them into blocks that can be discussed individually. We should resolve 
these topics one by one as they are all about independent questions:

ISSUE-41 (https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/41)
was about whether we want to allow arbitrary property paths in 
constraints. While this ticket was closed long ago, Peter's proposal 
suggests we check if there is new evidence to reopen it.

ISSUE-133 (https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/133)
is about two things:
- whether constraint components can appear multiple times within the 
same constraint.
- whether constraint components may only consist of one property (parameter)

ISSUE-135 (https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/135)
is about how to improve the syntax so that it becomes less verbose, by 
collapsing shapes and constraints.

ISSUE-138 (new, https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/138)
is about whether we should switch to an rdf:List-based syntax to encode 
property constraints.

ISSUE-139 (new, https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/track/issues/139)
is about whether all constraint properties can be applied in all contexts.

I hope this brings some structure into the discussion, and I welcome 
corrections if I have missed other differences. I have also added items 
to the PROPOSALs wiki page where people can indicate their preferences:

https://www.w3.org/2014/data-shapes/wiki/Proposals

Cheers,
Holger

Received on Friday, 18 March 2016 03:39:58 UTC