RDF WG Call 2014-02-25

1. Housekeeping
2. RDF Guidelines and Interoperability
   1. Report back about scoping paragraph and use cases.  (Jon Stroop)
   2. Plan next steps.
3. Update on RDFDatastream in AF 7 & RDF Controlled Vocabularies (Tom Johnson)
4. Status of AF RDF Tutorial (Adam Wead/Tom Johnson)
5. Proposal to Replace OM in Dive Into Hydra.
   1. Discuss need for basic DC RDF Datastream
   2. What remains for training materials?
   3. Define proposal/Assign work
6. rdf:List 
   1. Current implementation and AF 7
   2. Possible guidance for ordered lists in Hydra metadata?
7. Schedule next meeting/Standing meeting time?

Notes

Report back on Scoping paragraph and use cases from group for google doc

• Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eYMg8a-EmCoe6NqIDHuqJSd6qUuMTMriQ39OZYRUqKw/edit?pli=1
• Jon put together a scoping statement, list of use cases  (1 from A wead) and technologies used with comments from others.
• Mike read through the scoping statement for consensus 

Do we extend the scope of the document to include vocabularies and conceptual models?

• • Focus is on technical work on RDF, there is another potential strand of work on the vocabularies used, conceptual model, URI design - focus less technical and more on the library side of things. Some in the community like UCSD, Royal library and Oxford have done work on RDF conceptual models.
  • Capture and point to existing models
  • Taking on a common model implementation might be ambitious - too many discussions on modelling.
  • Underling technology to be model agnostic is good. It would be useful to take the technical implementation and prove it doesn't have any constraints on the models used.
  • Rather than common models, we could come up with a set of reference models that users can leverage. For example the scholar sphere data model or UCSD data model or Denmark's data model
  • Recipes for how one can extend a common model without losing on interoperability and extend on complexity would be useful

Summary (by Mike)

1. 1. Solicit and gather examples of data models from folks using RDF in Hydra
   2. Have documenattion for aiding folks with data models

Action

• Mike to add notes on a wiki page about data models (DONE, 2/25)
• Esme to add a page on wiki about RDF models  - RDF Vocabularies and Ontologies in use (DONE, 2/25)

Update on RDFDatastream in AF 7 & RDF Controlled Vocabularies (Tom Johnson)

• Good gist from Oregon that need to be migrated into AF and will happen soon - https://gist.github.com/terrellt/75a2fc84fd3d274a1bbd
• This is waiting for the legal aspects to signed off
• Comments welcome
• Tom to review what needs to be added or changed in Oregon codebase

 (Tom please in further details)

Review of active fedora tutorials

https://github.com/projecthydra/active_fedora/wiki/Lesson%3A-Use-Rails-fields_for-helper-to-Create-Forms-that-Edit-Complex-Nested-RDF-Graphs

• Comments by Adam on reviewing RDF metadata tutorial
  • There are 9 lessons. Did 5 with edits to the 5th, got stuck in the 6th and didn't try later lessons.

  • The tutorial is pretty good shape.

• James - Used RDF tutorial and read through curate model and found that the tutorial was a good guide
• Corey did similar tutorials to lessons 7, 8 and 9 and the lessons look fine
• Note: Navigation at the end of 6 is broken in wiki

Does the tutorial do what we want? or what do we want the tutorial to cover?

• • Currently it is setup to do a DC datastream with strings and the second to last step shows how to do nested attributes. It's a good example of how to do complicated nested structures like MADS.
  • Rather than getting users to start from scratch, get users to use existing models in the tutorial.
  • Read the curate codebase (for example) and extend the RDF implementation in the tutorial.

Any other tutorial out there?

• • There a gist page by Tom on using rdf https://github.com/no-reply/active_fedora/tree/rdf
  • Also, Tom is getting work done in HydraConnect into a light weight gem

Action

• • Mark - To run through the tutorial in the next few weeks and comment on its use, comparing it to an existing model and send notes on AF tutorial
  • Esme and Adam to get past step 6 of tutorial
  • Add a check point for early march to decide on including RDF in the curriculum - based on Tom's changes

Rough proposal to replace RDF with OM in dive into hydra at hydra camp curriculum

• The goal of this is to
  • Make applications simple
  • Get people to base their schema on RDF rather than xml
  • Reduce the barrier to using RDF in Hydra
    
    
• Is this necessary? Why do that?

  • After dive into Hydra, playing with metadata is complex and OM is just not friendly. Moving into RDF will lower the barrier - Jon

  • or shift the barrier

  • Corey - Technical barriers of OM versus RDF is not an issue. OM or RDF doesn't make a too much difference, except OM perpetuates using xml. There is a feeling in the community that RDF is better.

  • Mark - At the dive into Hydra level, it makes no diffence.

  • We need to bear in mind that the xml people are left out of this group.

  • Question on why is RDF is better than XML - What do we mean by interoperability of RDF?

    • Mike and Tom explain reusing RDF as not having self made xml nodes and be able to leverage the data btter through rdf graphs and query the data in a useful way.

  • Dive into Hydra should give a choice between RDF and XML and represent both to people

• Should we ask the Hydra community if RDF should replace OM in Hydra camp?
  • Mark: I don't think the email is necessary. Just because Dive into Hydra includes RDF, doesn't mean we rule out XML
    
    
• Need to provide more context in the tutorials, rather than just diving in and making a book model. t would be good to walk through the sufia model for example.
  
  
• Do we need to expand that proposal. What work needs to be done for this?
  • RDF datastream needs to be added to active fedora
    
    
• For an RDF based hydra curriculum what do we need?
  • We could swap the dive into Hydra tutorial with OM for RDF

rdf:list

• This is a pending item and needs to be carried forward.

• Would like guidance on what RDF needs to do with Hydra.

• Would like everyone in the working group to look at ordered list ontology and UCSD implementation (some links here would help)  - Action on all in WG

Meeting agreed to be on alternate Tuesdays at 9 AM PST (5PM GMT)