xml-dev - Playing with XML Schema & XSLT

[Jean-Marc Vanel <jmvanel@free.fr>]

Suppose I have a repository of XML Schemas describing a set of XML
databases (see [1]).
Then in my application I need a access a piece of information.
How do I locate the relevant database ? How do I make a query ?

If I directly express my query in XPath, XSLT, or Quilt, etc, it will
not be easy to locate the relevant database, because XPath is not XML.
So I propose to leverage the power of XML Schema and express my query in
XML Schema; this schema instance is what I call the "Desired Schema".
Then with some generic DOM, or maybe XSLT programming, I can make tree
pattern recognition to locate the Desired Schema among the available
Schemas (the repository of XML Schemas).
Having found a Schema offering an information equal or larger than the
Derired Schema, and the corresponding server or base URL, I can then
generically translate the Desired Schema into an XSLT query, or SQL,
QUILT, XQL or whatever.

So I propose to use XML Schema as a primary language for XML Queries.

But how do I guess or generate the Desired Schema in the first place ?
There must be some consenssus, some common set of tags.  I propose to
use as much as possible natural language tags, eventually
disambiguited by Wordnet [2] sense number. For non-concepts, certainly
95%
of the design objects can be represented this way. About that, I regret
that the first example in the introduction to XML Schema has a tag
<shippingDate> , and not <shipping><date>, which is extendible, and
allows machine understanding.
For concepts, I agree that compound tags are necessary, because many
things don't have a name, e.g. schemaLocation in XML Schema; and it
would be bad to borrow a general term and apply a particular sense to
it.
So I propose to use the combinatory richness of human language in
computer matters, and have small modular vocabularies combined in larger
XML Schemas.


[1] XML All-purpose Protocol ( XML distributed architecture )
http://wwbota.free.fr/XMLprotocol.htm

[2] Wordnet  http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn

--
<person>
  <firstName>Jean-Marc</firstName>
  <lastName>Vanel</LastName>
  <motto>Veni, vidi, convici</motto>
  <conference>9th International World Wide Web Conference - Amsterdam,
May 15-19, 2000
   <a href="http://www.www9.org/">site</a>
  </conference>
  <project>Worlwide Botanical Knowledge Base -
      making botany available on Internet
    <a href="http://wwbota.free.fr/" >site</a>
  </project>
  <a href="http://jmvanel.free.fr/>home page</a>
  <a href="mailto:jmvanel@free.fr">mail (possibly put "wwbota" in
subject to route your mail in relevant folder)</a>
</person>





***************************************************************************
This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers.
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@xml.org&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev
List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
***************************************************************************