UAT adoption

[Molinaro, Marco]

Hi Markus, hi Registry,
(CC'ing TCG to alert a Std's discussion topic)

Il giorno mer 24 ago 2022 alle ore 13:37 Markus Demleitner <
msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de> ha scritto:

> Dear Registry community,
>
> Now that we have a proper vocabulary reflecting the UAT in the VO, we
> can finally fix VOResource to actually explain what "use the UAT in
> subject" means.
>
> This is not super-urgent; we could thus go for VOResource 1.2 with
> this.  However, I don't see a sizable number of other changes that
> would warrant a new document version.  I would hence suggest that an
> erratum should do it, too.
>

I have a feeling that using an erratum for
the update proposed below would be stretching
the scope of errata.
(BTW: I agree on the proposed change to the
specification in full -- erratum content --)

I would rather see a different approach to
the review process for cases like this one.
My view/proposed approach:
- the update is limited to a few sections/parts
of the specification
- a WD and then a PR is set up with the changes
- the RFC states clearly at top that _only_
those sections need to be reviewed
- comments outside this scope are noted down but
dismissed

Doing so, supposing a quick WD period in the WG
applies (and I don't see why this shouldn't happen
in this case), the 6-weeks period for RFC & vote
should really be enough (just look at the proposed
changes at bottom to have an idea on this).

Cheers
    Marco


> I've just written a proposal for one -- see below.  Feel free to
> comment and suggest improvements (or to protest if you see major
> flaws or insist on VOResouce 1.2).  If I hear nothing, I'll move the
> thing on to the TCG in two weeks.
>
> ✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂
>
> ---++ Rationale
>
> VOResource 1.1 says in the documentation of the subject element:
>
>         Terms for Subject should be drawn from the Unified Astronomy
> Thesaurus
>         (http://astrothesaurus.org).
>
> This prescription is not suffient in practice; for many reasons, we
> cannot really use the UAT concept URIs (for instance,
> http://astrothesaurus.org/uat/11 for "The relative amount of a given
> chemical element with respect to other elements") in VOResource.  The
> label (in the example, "Abundance ratios") is not necessarily stable and
> suffers from case and potentially punctuation issues.
>
> To have a solid foundation for UAT use in VOResource, a specific scheme
> has recently been endorsed in the VO, "Adopting the UAT as an IVOA
> vocabulary", https://ivoa.net/documents/uat-as-upstream/.  This is what
> should now be used in VOResource, and hence the document should contain
> a pointer to the UAT adoption note.  This erratum introduces these
> pointers and updates an example to the modern practice.
>
> ---++ Erratum content
>
> In the example at the beginning of section 2 VOResource 1.1, replace:
>
>     <subject>radio astronomy</subject>
>     <subject>data repositories</subject>
>     <subject>digital libraries </subject>
>     <subject>grid-based processing</subject>
>
> with:
>
>     <subject>radio-astronomy</subject>
>     <subject>astronomy-software</subject>
>     <subject>astronomy-web-services</subject>
>     <subject>search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence</subject>
>
> In section 2.2.3 "Language and Transliteration", replace "description,
> title, subject", mentioned as examples of elements containing natural
> language, with "description or title").
>
> In section 3.1.3 "General Content Metadata", replace the Comment on
> "Element subject" with:
>
>         The content of subject SHOULD be a fragment identifier of the URI
> of a
>         concept in the IVOA UAT (https://www.ivoa.net/rdf/uat/), that is,
> a
>         string like "virtual-observatories".  For further details, see the
>         IVOA endorsed note on Adopting the UAT for the VO,
>         https://ivoa.net/documents/uat-as-upstream/.
>
> In the XML schema delivered with VOResource 1.1, replace the content of
> second xs:documentation element within the xs:element definition of
> subject (line 694) with the comment text replaced into section 3.1.3.
>
> ---++ Impact Assessment
>
> At the moment subject simply is not machine-readable and hence its
> content is treated as plain text.  TOPCAT, for instance, translates
> subject constraints into
>
>         LOWER(res_subject) like '%keyword%'.
>
> These will obviously keep working as before (except if a data provider
> actually had introduced upstream UAT URIs; none has, so far).
>
> The syntax chosen in the UAT note – words separated by hyphens – also
> makes queries using ivo_haswords work as before.  During the review
> phase of this erratum, the TAP service at http://dc.g-vo.org/tap carries
> table rr.uat_concept that reflects how rr.res_subject will look like
> once the UAT migration is finished.  To illustrate the effects on
> queries using haswords, try:
>
>         select distinct uat_concept from rr.subject_uat
>         where 1=ivo_hasword(uat_concept, 'radio')
>
> there.
>
> Hence, we do not expect noticable negative impact.  On the other hand, a
> migration to the scheme forseen here will enable many useful
> applications, starting from reliable keyword matching to semantics-based
> query expansion to subject mapping for interdisciplinary metadata
> repositories (cf.
>
> https://blog.g-vo.org/semantics-cross-discipline-discovery-and-down-to-earth-code.html
> ).
>
> ✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂✂
>
>           -- Markus
>


-- 
Marco Molinaro
INAF - Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica
Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
email marco.molinaro at inaf.it
tel. [+39] 333 33 20 564 [also Telegram]
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