Vocabularies specification: Request for Comments

This document completed its RFC period in October 2008. It is now undergoing TCG review. The specification is currently at Proposed Recommendation v1.16. There are also machine-readable RDF files available at the URL given in section 4 of this document.

If you wish to see line-by-line changes to the document, see the volute repository (document version 1.15 corresponded to repository revision 757, and version 1.16 to revision 855)

In order to add a comment to the document, please edit this page and add your comment to the list below (include your WikiName so authors can contact you for further information). When the author(s) of the document have considered the comment, they will provide a response after the comment.

Discussions about any of the comments or responses should be conducted on the Semantics mailing list, semantics@ivoa.net.

Comments from the community

• Comment by BobHanisch (29 Sept 2008)
  • In general I find this document to be well-organized, and I think it is a useful addition to IVOA standards.
  • I think the language of "a proposal" all needs to be taken out, however. The assumption is that the document becomes a standard, and when referred to in this context, language like "the proposed standard" and "the purpose of this proposal" does not make any sense.
  • Agreed: I've adjusted the text accordingly, in the repository (see revision 802) (NormanGray)

• Comment by Antoine Isaac, one of the authors of the SKOS Primer, 30 Sep 2008 (via Norman). Antoine made some on-list comments on the SKOS content of the Vocabularies document.
  • Agreed: I've adjusted the text accordingly, in the repository (see revision 802), except for the issue about notations, which I'm following up on that list (NormanGray)
  • Resolved to Norman's satisfaction, at least (see eg W3C SWD list and thread). See Volute revision 806.

TCG Review

Vocabularies document has a normative dependency on the W3C SKOS standard. Although that was due to be completed at the end of 2008, the process is still in last call. It should, therefore, be completed 'soon', and Norman proposes that we complete the TCG review as normal and only postpone the Exec review until after the SKOS standard becomes a W3C Rec.

The remaining SKOS issues are fine technical detail, and very unlikely to have any impact on our use of SKOS in this document.

Links:

• Issues list for the document.
• Detailed revision information for the document
• Rolling editors' draft

During the TCG review, Working and Interest Group chairs should add their comments under their name:

Applications (Tom McGlynn, Mark Taylor)

Data Access Layer (Keith Noddle, Jesus Salgado)

Data Model (Mireille Louys, AnitaRichards)

Grid&Web Sevices (Matthew Graham, Paul Harrison)

Registry (Ray Plante, Aurelien Stebe)

Semantics (Sebastien Derriere, Norman Gray)

I approve! (NormanGray)

VOEvent (Rob Seaman, Alasdair Allan)

VO Query Language (Pedro Osuna, Yuji Shirasaki)

VOTable (François Ochsenbein)

Standard and Processes (Francoise Genova)

Astro RG (Masatoshi Ohishi)

Data Curation & Preservation (Bob Hanisch)

The concern I raised earlier, about the language being too tentative, has largely been resolved. The only exception is the Abstract, which begins with a sentence justifying the need for the document; I think this first sentence can just be removed. Also, the paragraphs highlighted in yellow refer to an update to SKOS that was supposed to have happened in December 2008. It would be nice if this text could be updated or clarified as to the SKOS status. These are quite minor points, however, and I approve of the document.

Thanks, Bob. This, and issue 9 (about the definition example), are fixed in revisions 938 and 939.

Theory (Herve Wozniak, Claudio Gheller)

TCG (ChristopheArviset, Severin Gaudet)

The standard is very well written, provide various examples of reference implementations in section 4 that give good confidence of this standard usefulness and validity. I approve this document.

A minor editorial comment on section 2.2. Would it be useful to directly indicate which SKOS concepts (single URI and single preferred label) are REQUIRED and others only OPTIONAL? It is currently a bit "hidden" in the next paragraph.

Like Norman suggested, I think it is wise to wait for the SKOS standard to become a W3C Rec before we formally submit this standard for the Exec approval.