Harsh Words for SKOS eXtension for Labels

November 8, 2012

In 2009, the W3C published the SKOS-XL (SKOS eXtension for Labels). Now, Voyages of the Semantic Enterprise asks, “Who Needs Skos-XL? Maybe No One.” What does writer Irene Polikoff have against the SKOS extension?

The post begins at the beginning, with an explanation of the Triangle of Reference and the concepts behind the open source SKOS. Polikoff goes on to describe the purpose of SKOS-XL: to allow concept labels to collect their own metadata. This, she says, unnecessarily complicates vocabulary management. She writes:

“Labels are not strings as in SKOS proper, but RDF resources with their own identity. Each label can have only one literal form; this is where the actual text string (the name) goes. The literal form is not one per Label per language as with SKOS’s constraint for assigning preferred labels, but one per Label. So, to accommodate different languages, different label resources must be created. At the same time, there can be multiple Label resources with the same literal form (for example, two different Label resources with the literal form ‘Mouse’). Even a simple SKOS-XL vocabulary is considerably bulkier than its SKOS alternative. Since SKOS-XL format takes far more space, storage, import/export and performance of search and query can become an issue for larger vocabularies.”

Labels can be linked to each other as well as to their concepts, the article notes, further increasing complexity. Also, the same text label may be applied to different entities, potentially leading to confusion. Furthermore, the write up points to a couple of specific integrity clashes between SKOS and SKOS-XL. See the article for more details.

Polikoff closes by offering to help readers who think SKOS-XL is their only choice for vocabulary management to find a simpler solution. Will many users agree it is wise to do so?

Cynthia Murrell, November 08, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Metadata, News, Open source, Tools

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.