Range of dcat:endpointURL

[andrea-perego]

Ref: https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/dcat/#Property:dataservice_endpointurl

The current ED says the range is xsd:anyURI.

I guess it should instead be rdfs:Resource, as it is for dcat:accessURL and dcat:downloadURL.

[jakubklimek]

I think #249 deals with the same thing?

[pwin]

Is this because we want to be able to add other metadata to endpoints? At some point we need something that can be validated to a dereferenceable URI don't we, rather than to a URI that could represent a 'thing'?

[davebrowning]

Well #249 at comment made a clear decision and the minutes here are even clearer:

RESOLUTION: no change to domain/range axiomatization of downloadURL and accessURL; endpointURL to be axiomatized similarly; add property-chain axiom relating accessURL to endpointURL; improve usage notes related to all the xxxURL properties

That's all happened except for endpointURL, I think.

[dr-shorthair]

Indeed. Range of endpointURL needs to be fixed.

Property-chain is axiomatized here already: https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/blob/gh-pages/dcat/rdf/dcat.ttl#L446

Usage notes could still be improved

[dr-shorthair]

See #740

[smrgeoinfo]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I don't think that the property-chain dcat:accessService/dcat:endpointURL actually matches the intention of dcat:accessURL. I think the interpretation of accessURL that seems to be in use is to identify a web page (landing page, web form...) that a human has to interact with to get the desired distribution. A service endpoint is oriented to machine interaction, and likely requires that the user client implement some software to generate the necessary web requests to get the distribution. The interaction model for the two kinds of URLs is completely different.

[dr-shorthair]

I think the interpretation of accessURL that seems to be in use is to identify a web page (landing page, web form...)

No - that would be dcat:landingPage.

[smrgeoinfo]

It seems like in practice many access URLs point to landing pages and there's no difference.

Sometime the access URL might get you to a form that lets you set up filters to get more precise access to what you want, something like ERDDAP TableDAP Data Access Pages. In this case I guess you could argue that the form is a UI on top of an accessService, but the user doesn't need to know anything about that--its just a web page to them, and the URL for the form is different from the service endpoint URL that the form is using.

Not all landing pages actually provide a link to access the data, whereas the intention (correct me if this is wrong) of the accessURL is to get the user as close to the data as possible (ideally only one more click).

[dr-shorthair]

My point is that DCAT has slots that clearly differentiate between the different functions - API vs. LandingPage. But of course we can't control how people (mis-)use the spec.