Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RDF and RELAX NG
 Earlier this week, dave.beckett@b... (Dave Beckett) wrote: >As far as any XML schema language is appropriate for general RDF/XML >with it's open use of XML Namespaces, RelaxNG is the one I'd suggest is >most appropriate (compared to for example W3C XML Schemas which is more >of a closed/complete DTD style). This discussion has connected with a number of other conversations to leave me wondering whether RELAX NG might prove to be more than a schema language capable of of validating RDF/XML, but indeed a schema language which eases the conflicts at the boundaries between RDF and XML. RDF/XML has taken a lot of flak lately. On the one hand, it offers too many options, so developers who want to work with RDF data using XML tools face a pretty frustrating task, even before getting into the risks of processing graphs with tree-oriented tools. On the other hand, trying to make XML vocabularies RDF/XML compatible is not much fun either. Some aspects of this [1] don't even seem like good markup practice to me, especially things like "eschew mixed content", the use of RDF-namespaced attributes in host vocabularies, and container issues. We can struggle along with this, sure. RDF and XML seem stuck in a lousy marriage at this point, each disappointing the other on a regular basis. Mark Pilgrim's done a nice job [2] of delineating various ways in which this conversation often flows, tying it to the Pie/Echo/Atom/etc. project's concrete challenges. It seems like there should be some way of at least separating those issues in practice. It may be very naive of me to think this, but something keeps telling me that RELAX NG's patterns and RDF's graphs may be able to talk to each other in ways that go well beyond the rdf:parseType attribute or XSLT transforms between attribute names in a local vocabulary and the rdf:ID, rdf:about, etc. I suspect (though I'm still working it out, and don't know nearly enough to be certain) that RELAX NG annotations could be sufficient to provide a complete mapping from an unchanged XML vocabulary to a set of RDF graphs. In some ways, this feels perverse, as it uses something of a PSVI approach to define a mapping between the XML and its RDF reading. At the same time, however, RELAX NG patterns feel flexible enough to support RDF's many possibilities and to express the different graphs which may appear given different co-occurrence constraints. (I'm not proposing RELAX NG as a general RDF schema language - I don't think that would work. This is _just_ about mapping XML to RDF graphs.) I don't yet have anything concrete to show, I'm afraid, so this is pretty much playing a hunch. Anyone have the same hunch? Anyone have reasons why this is obviously impossible? Possible? [1] - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/10/30/rdf-friendly.html [2] - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/20/dive.html Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
