[xml-dev] Linking documents that "belong" together == Best Practices

[Adam Van Den Hoven <Adam.Hoven@bluezone.net>]

Hey guys, 

I need some suggestions about best practices for linking documents that
"belong" together. For instance I have a number of chapters of a book, each
in its own XML file. I need some way to bind them all into a book, with an
order and probably those chapters are going to belong to sections that make
up the book. 

I can think of a number of ways to do this.

1) Build a custom schema
<book>
	<title>Some Book</title>
	<section><title>section 2</title>
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter01.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter02.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter03.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter04.xml" />
	</section>
	<section><title>section 2</title>
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter05.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter06.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter07.xml" />
		<chapter xlink:href="chapter08.xml" />
	</section>
</book>
But that seems to be a poor choice long term (particularly for a publicly
available document.

2) Use RDF in some way (using Dublin Core Relation IsPartOf constructs
maybe)
3) Use Extended XLinks

What are the things to consider when deciding how to do these things. I
don't want to put everything into a single document since each can validly
have its own metadata. What is the "best practice" for this situation?

Thanks.


Adam van den Hoven
Internet Software Developer
Blue Zone
tel. 604 685 4310 ext. 260
fax 604 685 4391

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