Data publishers may publish data according to different profiles, either simultaneously (e.g. in one same data "distribution") or in parallel (e.g. via content negotiation). [ID37] (5.37)

[nicholascar]

Entered from Google Doc

[aisaac]

I'm not sure why this requirement has been categorized as 'profile' in the google doc. It seems rather related to profile negotiation or DCAT.

[kcoyle]

@aisaac It looks to me to be part of the profile description ontology, and thus fits in the guidance document, as well as profile negotiation. It has a strong element of profile publication.

[aisaac]

@kcoyle I'm not sure how it could relate to the profile description ontology. I understand this requirement to be about the specific (instance) data published according to one profile (or several profiles, in this case) not about the description of the profile in general.

[nicholascar]

Agree with @aisaac: the Prof Ont doesn't link from data to profiles, only amongst profile parts and in between profiles, so it has nothing to say here.

[kcoyle]

OK, I think I see what it means, so fine to drop 'profile' and leave it as 'profile negotiation.'

[aisaac]

@kcoyle I was only questioning the first part of the sentence, about the Prof ontology!

And now I'm not sure I was arguing about removing the general 'profile' flavor of the requirement in my own comment (#274 (comment)). The more I think of it, and the more I wonder about this being a key requirement for many things we do in DXWG. It underpins the needs for negotiation, but also the need for profile-specific distributions of DCAT. In fact it underpins the very notion of profile... I'm fairly sure I'd like to have a sentence like this in the profile guidance doc, if it's not already there.

This is not simple :-)

[kcoyle]

Now I'm re-reading (and re-re-reading) the requirement, and it isn't terribly clear, but it reads to me like

1. a DCAT requirement for publishing data relating to profiles, but I think it's wrong to say "in one same distribution" because I would see different profiles as different distributions. I don't think that DCAT has anything that would allow it to identify that a distribution relates to a specific profile, so I don't think that DCAT has taken on this requirement. There are profiles of DCAT but is there way to have data in multiple profiles distributed from a single dataset within one catalog? (e.g. like DCAT-AP-IT and DCAT-AP-DE within one catalog. Exists?)

2. a conneg requirement to allow negotiation of datasets (or anything else) by profile (which is what conneg is all about)

This makes me think that maybe we haven't integrated profiles and DCAT, but since we are working on them at the same time, perhaps DCAT changes should wait until profiles have settled down, so this can hold for DCAT++. @davebrowning @makxdekkers @dr-shorthair ?? Comments?

[smrgeoinfo]

can't the dct:conformsTo property on the dcat:distribution be used to indicate that the distribution relates to a specific profile?

[aisaac]

@kcoyle yes it's both.
And I think a while ago we've had a discussion about the possibility of having distributions conforming to different profiles. This is maybe not the prefered option (and indeed profile negotiation has the potential to have 'clean', profile-specific distributions). But it is possible, and in many cases, desirable, for example when different profiles would use largely overlapping vocabulary elements.

@smrgeoinfo yes dct:conformsTo is a suitable option, and maybe at several DCAT levels (see the ongoing discussion about expressing the conformance of catalogue records with standards, #502 ). But anyway as @kcoyle says it's probably wiser to wait until the profile work has settle down before we require full alignment with the DCAT spec on this matter.

[kcoyle]

What concerns me about 'conformsTo' is that the object is any standard. So how do you know that the object URL of 'conformsTo' references a profile and not some other standard? Anyway, I think that will occur to folks when the time comes, so best to let it go for now.

[aisaac]

I've re-assigned the profile-guidance label to reflect the difficulty categorizing this requirement.

[aisaac]

I've created a new requirement that's quite overlapping with this one, but it reflects a decision we made in a plenary meeting and was recorded so in the google doc.

[nicholascar]

De-tagging as profile-negotiation as dealt with by its point of view