Profiles must support discoverability via search engines [ID40] (UC 5.40)

[kcoyle]

No description provided.

[aisaac]

F2F3: it's still unsure whether this is about making the profile discoverable, or making the data (which uses the profile) discoverable

[nicholascar]

If this is about either making the profile discoverable, or making the data (which uses the profile) discoverable:

if a growing set of resources use a model/view mechanism such as this proposal https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/tree/profiledesc-working/profiledesc/profileneg and one of the supported formats of a formalised (i.e. ProfDesc) alternates view is JSON-LD then Google will start to pick up both the URIs pointing to profiles, thus increasing their pagerank (making them more discoverable).

Perhaps backlinking may be able to occur too and make the data using the profiles known.

Wouldnet making data [more] discoverable depend on Google and others starting to understand what conformance to a profile means (i.e. if I see conformance to DCAT, I can reliably ask for a dct:title which will be a displayable string? Well, we haven't yet finalised what conformance actually means (i.e. what it guarantees that a search engine can depend on to index) nor do search engines understand our ontologies in order to follow them, even if we had the guarantee locked down.

[kcoyle]

Reading the actual use case (https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/ucr/#ID40) it appears to be about DCAT documents facilitating discovery of datasets, and mentions schema.org and the degree to which web pages are discoverable using schema.org. Note that WG member Dan Brickley represents Google and schema.org and can speak to the needs of Google in discovering datasets, and has stated that is his interest in DCAT. That said, precise "if you do this, Google will do that" is always elusive.

[nicholascar]

It is likely possible to represent the Alternates View of a resource, if expressed in PROF (Profile Dec. Ont.) in schema.org. Recognising that the work I just did isn't yet harmonised with Lars' Ruben's work, I will address that before making any such mapping.

[jpullmann]

Given the ambiguity mentioned by @aisaac and different implications should not this requirement be split into 2 separate ones?

1. Support discovery of profiles: involves processing of profile definition (PROF) and optional resolution of the inheritance chain
2. Support discovery of resources defined by / compliant with a linked profile: requires processing of resource definition (DCAT), resolution of the profile links (to be defined) and cross-linking with the already processed profiles (1)

[rob-metalinkage]

As the originator (transcribing the concerns of a discussion about this) I will attempt top clarify...

we are talking about profiles of DCAT primarily - i.e. what rules can we apply to DCAT practice to maximise precision and recall of DCAT:Dataset entities in a search engine?

This may be inclusion of schema.org properties - or possibly an alignment between dcat properties and equivalent schema.org properties that search engines can exploit.

The actual mechanism will need to be informed by Dan Brickley and others with implementation experience.

Discovery of profiles is a special case if we follow the direction that Profiles themselves are catalogued resources, otherwise we can ignire it in this context IMHO.

Discovery of datasets through metadata about what profiles of relevant standards the datasets or the distribuitions themselves conform to is another possible angle - but I dont know if this is a realistic concern for mainstream search engines. Its certainly a concern for Catalog services, but I think that's out of scope - but covered anyway in ensuring in the expressivity of profile combinations and formalising how these are attached to dcat entities. (ie. probably "SHOULD" guidance on use of dct:conformsTo property)

[kcoyle]

I note that this is a use case/requirement that has not yet been voted by the group. I will remove the strike-out on the case in the Google Doc. [1] It will be listed there as a profile requirement that needs to be approved.

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/13hV2tJ6Kg2Hfe7e1BowY5QfCIweH9GxSCFQV1aWtOPg/edit#

[aisaac]

Reading use case 5.40 it seems that the use case is only about DCAT and thus does not support this requirement. To keep this requirement we would have to create another use case.

[rob-metalinkage]

This is about best practices for profiles of DCAT - i.e. related to the guidance document and the "alignment" activities in the DCAT vocabulary activity.

Because we are not publishing specific DCAT profiles, we need to only make sure there is the necessary information (i.e. an alignment) to allow schema.org compatible DCAT profiles to exist.

Suggest reword requirement as something more like:
A mapping to schema.org must exist to support a profile of DCAT that in turn supports discovery of datasets using schema.org elements.

[nicholascar]

Just a clarification: we interpret search engine discoverability as being only schema.org? Not my field at all (SEO) but I just want to check this

[aisaac]

Just a note: as of today, our Google doc for group discussion still lists this requirement as undecided