Re: Embedding RDF metadata within an XML document

[Warren Hedley <w.hedley@auckland.ac.nz>]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the quick replies from Dave and Rick.

The reason that we're concerned about embedding RDF is that
we were hoping that search engine software might be able to
make use of this information without having to know anything
about CellML. I guess the most important question is: is this
a reasonable expectation?

Our current plan is to use an RDF element to say "hey, this
is metadata", and then use elements from the Dublin Core
namespace to define the usual title/author/keywords sort
of information. We then would have metadata elements from
our own RDF schema (in our own namespace) that define
metadata specific to our problem domain.

Dave suggested adding the <rdf:RDF> element and adding the
@rdf:about attribute with an empty string. I might end up
something like the following.

<model name="my_model"
    xmlns="http://www.cellml.org/2001/03/cellml">

  <rdf:RDF
      xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3c.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
      xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.0"
      xmlns:cmeta="http://www.cellml.org/2001/03/metadata">
    <rdf:Description about="">
      <dc:title> Insulin signalling pathway </dc:title>
      <dc:creator>
        <cmeta:surname> Doe </cmeta:surname>
        <cmeta:first_name> Jane </cmeta:first_name>
        <cmeta:mid_initials> A </cmeta:mid_initials>
      </dc:creator>
      <cmeta:species>Cavia porcellus</cmeta:species>
    </rdf:Description>
  </rdf:RDF>

  ... CellML elements ...

</model>

Assuming people think this looks OK, I have two further questions:

1) Having to have both <RDF> and <Description> elements bothers me.
   If I have only one item of metadata associated with some CellML
   object, then it starts looking pretty verbose. Can I ditch one
   of them without breaking any recommendations or standard pratices?

2) Is it generally accepted that @about="" on the <Description>
   element associates the contents of the <Description> with the
   resource it is embedded in? Does it associate it with the
   document or the parent element? I would prefer the latter
   behaviour because I want to be able to embed metadata at
   multiple levels in a CellML document.

Thanks again.

-- 
Warren Hedley
Department of Engineering Science
Auckland University
New Zealand