[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Grand Challenge: XML-aware program that dynamically learns how tomap/tra

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 12:20:35 +0000

Hi Folks,

Grand Challenge: Write a program that is XML-aware [1]. The XML-aware program is able to dynamically discover the mapping/transformation between XML instances that represent the same thing but in different ways. Specifically, the input to the program is a pair of XML instances representing a magnetic variation in different but equivalent ways. For example, one pair of instances represent this magnetic variation:

	West 014 degrees, 40 minutes, 4 tenths of a minute

Instance #1 represents the magnetic variation this way:

<MAG_VAR>W014404</MAG_VAR>

Instance #2 represents the magnetic variation this way:

<magneticVariation>
    <magneticVariationEW>West</magneticVariationEW>
    <magneticVariationValue>14.7</magneticVariationValue>
</magneticVariation>

The program reads in and analyzes many such pairs - as many as are needed to discern the underlying pattern. 

The output of the program is a description of the mapping between the two representations and/or a program that can automatically convert one representation to the other.

Thus, the output might be something like this:

1. The <MAG_VAR> element is equivalent to the <magneticVariation> element.

2. A "W" in the first character of the <MAG_VAR> element is equivalent to "West" in:

	<magneticVariationEW>West</magneticVariationEW>

3. An "E" in the first character of the <MAG_VAR> element is equivalent to "East" in:

	<magneticVariationEW>East</magneticVariationEW>

4. The "014" in the second, third, and fourth characters of the <MAG_VAR> element is equivalent to the characters before the decimal point in <magneticVariationValue> (i.e., "014" is equivalent to "14).

5. The "404" in the fifth, sixth, and seventh characters of the <MAG_VAR> element is equivalent to the decimal portion in <magneticVariationValue> (i.e., "404" is equivalent to ".7"). This will involve some arithmetic.

/Roger

[1] By "XML-aware" I mean the program has been hardcoded to understand the XML syntax such as start tags, end tags, and element content. (If the program is written in XSLT, then understanding the XML syntax is already baked into the XSLT language.) To simplify the problem, the program may be hardcoded to understand that the pairs represent magnetic variation and the program understands the concept of expressing magnetic variation in degrees/minutes/tenths-of-seconds or in decimal degrees. However, the program hasn't been hardcoded to understand particular elements. Thus, the program hasn't been hardcoded to understand what a <magneticVariation> element means or what a <MAG_VAR> element means. The program must dynamically learn such relationships.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Grand Challenge: XML-aware program that dynamicallylearns how to map/transform XML instances
    • From: Timothy Cook <timothywayne.cook@gmail.com>