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Re: XML/RDF

• To: Micah Dubinko <MDubinko@c...>
• Subject: Re: XML/RDF
• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 12:08:31 -0800
• Cc: Mike Champion <mc@x...>, xml-dev@l...
• References: <BD2DBD26EE0BAA48B1A425C7BE7923002CFF9F@c...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Micah Dubinko wrote:
> Hi Paul, Mike,
> 
> 
>>Two databases may 
>>use different identifiers for what is in fact the same concept, such as 
>>zip code. A program that wants to compare or combine information across 
>>the two databases has to know that these two terms are being used to 
>>mean the same thing.
> 
> 
> Isn't that the whole crux of the problem? If the problem is that two
> databases (or web pages) use a different name for "zip code", the solution
> is to add a third (Q)name, that both must agree upon?


That's one option, but it is very heavy-handed and not practical in all 
cases. What do you do about pre-existing data sources that you don't 
control? What if you can't convince the owners of these data sources to 
work together?

I prefer the other option. I can, either locally or globally, make a 
statement that says that these two things are really the same and it is 
_as if_ they had standardized but without the effort. Then I can save my 
energy to standardize the really hard cases like across disparate 
addressing schemes or protocols, or when the mapping is more complex 
than a simple renaming.

  Paul Prescod

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: XML/RDF
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
  • Re: XML/RDF
    • From: Miles Sabin <miles@m...>

• References:
  • RE: XML/RDF
    • From: Micah Dubinko <MDubinko@c...>

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