Re: [xml-dev] Schema design and attribute for ontology identification

[Felix Sasaki <fsasaki@w3.org>]

You might look into GRDDL, see

http://www.w3.org/2004/01/rdxh/spec#intro

one purpose of GRDDL is to represent the relation of XML to ontological 
definitions. See also the use case at

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/NOTE-grddl-scenarios-20070406/#header_use_case

Felix

Dowling, Nora M. wrote:
> You might want to check out Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
> http://dublincore.org/about/ to possibly reuse DCMI types for
> identifying sources. 
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alexander Johannesen [mailto:alexander.johannesen@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 11:50 PM
> To: XML Developers List
> Subject: [xml-dev] Schema design and attribute for ontology
> identification
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm creating a very simple pipeline schema as a basis for various
> SOA/ROA development projects, and I've been pondering a number of
> things in this process, especially what the best way is to identify
> that a certain sub-tree of an XML belongs to a certain ontology (an
> ontology here is loosely defined as a vocabulary, and not as a schema
> per se). Now before we head down namespaces let's make it clear that
> this is not about mixed content model but about identification. I've
> pondered different ways to do it (In all these examples I've use URI's
> as the identifier, but they might be uid's of any kind, of course) ;
>
>  <container xmlns="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>
> Namespaces here feels wrong to me as the content of the <container>
> may not even have a schema (yet). It's up to applications to deal with
> content they know about, and I'm not sure I want to a) imply namespace
> handling in all our tools pr. default, and b) most of our tools will
> use simple but application specific XML and I don't see the benefits
> to forcing everyone to also do schema work for mostly non-validating
> reasons.
>
>  <container id="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>  <container oid="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>
> The plain @id clashes with xml:id for me, and a great number of tools
> will assume that's what they are. And that's not necessarily wrong.
> The @oid seems quite non-descript yet workable. Perhaps call the
> attribute @ontology or something similar?
>
> Further to this is the notion that a container of XML contains data of
> some kind, ala ;
>
>  <container type="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>
> Or one can pull an RDF (introducing namespaces where we might not want
> them) ;
>
>  <container rdf:about="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>
> Or Topic Maps (again, introducing namespaces where we might not want
> them) ;
>
>  <container xtm:psi="http://some.ontology";> ... </container>
>
> Thoughts? What do you people do these days to identify that a sub-tree
> belongs to some notion that isn't necessarily another schema?
>
>
> Alex
>