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Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT)
https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/dcat/
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Properties relating to series can be confused with those for versions #1443

Closed agreiner closed 2 years ago

agreiner commented 2 years ago

For a cataloged resource, previous and first and last properties can easily be confused with versions. Would it be more helpful to users if we called them previousInSeries, firstInSeries, lastInSeries?

riccardoAlbertoni commented 2 years ago

I would be in favour of the change... though I have just noticed that the properties' definitions refer to "ordered collections" besides series, see below the definition of dcat:last

The last resource in an ordered collection or series of resources, to which the current resource belongs.

Can we name the properties specifying inSeries if the properties are also for "ordered collections"? I guess no..

On the other hand, in the current document, we have only four occurrences of the term "ordered collections". I don't remember from which discussion that term came up. I wonder if we want to drop the references to "ordered collections", in that case, I wouldn't see any contradiction in adding the ending "inSeries" to properties' names.

riccardoAlbertoni commented 2 years ago

We have discussed this issue the last DCAT call [see https://www.w3.org/2022/02/22-dxwgdcat-minutes]. During the discussion Andrea reminded to me some of the motivations I missed in my above posts.

The current version defines Prev, Next, Last, and First at the level of resources, not only for datasets. This choice opens their use to ordered collections of other kinds or future use cases. Therefore, restricting the names to the dataset series seems to be premature.

The proposal that came out as a result of the discussion is to keep these properties as they are, at least for the moment, and see if such a level of generality will pay off, namely, how communities will take advantage of them.

agreiner commented 2 years ago

I can't think of an example that would not be a series. Non-data resources in an ordered collection would still be called a series.

riccardoAlbertoni commented 2 years ago

This issue was discussed in the last DCAT meeting, https://www.w3.org/2022/03/08-dxwgdcat-minutes#t07

The main pushback for changing the name is

Changing the names will break the relationship with the IANA relation types these properties are meant to be linked to.

agreiner commented 2 years ago

I see; thank you for the explanation. I'm fine with leaving them as is then.