Word of the day: upconversion

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

Recently I read an article [1] by Michael Kay and learned a fabulous word:

    upconversion

The word originates in the broadcasting industry, where it is used to mean the conversion of a low resolution image to an equivalent high resolution image.

In the XML world, the word refers to taking unstructured text and adding structure (markup) to create a richer, structured document. Here's how Michael Kay describes it:

   Upconversion is the generation of a format 
   with detailed markup from a format with 
   less-detailed or no markup, where it is 
   necessary to generate the additional markup 
   by recognizing structural patterns that are 
   implicit in the textual content itself.


EXAMPLE #1

Upconvert this fixed-field, comma-separated text:

    Origin of Wealth, Eric D. Beinhocker, 2006, 
    1-57851-777-X, Harvard Business School Press

to this XML format:

    <Book>
        <Title>Origin of Wealth</Title>
        <Author>Eric D. Beinhocker</Author>
        <Date>2006</Date>
        <ISBN>1-57851-777-X</ISBN>
        <Publisher>Harvard Business School Press</Publisher>
    </Book>


EXAMPLE #2

Upconvert this prose:

    Level 1 managers may sign off on purchase requests 
    that do not exceed $10K. 

to XML by mapping nouns to markup and adjectives to data:

    <Request id="purchase">
        <signoff manager="level1" LE="10000" />
    </Datatype>


QUESTION

Consider the spectrum from random text to well-designed XML:


<------------------------------------------------->
  random                                       XML

               upconversion --------->



Suppose we place prose somewhere between random text and XML:


<------------------------------------------------->
  random         prose                         XML

               upconversion --------->



Where would you place XPath?


For example, consider these three ways of expressing a business rule:

(a) Prose

    Level 1 managers may sign off on purchase requests 
    that do not exceed $10K.

(b) XPath

    not(purchase-request[number(cost) gt 10000])

(c) XML

    <Request id="purchase">
        <signoff manager="level1" LE="10000" />
    </Datatype>


Where would you place the XPath expression in this spectrum:


<------------------------------------------------->
  random         prose                         XML

               upconversion --------->


Would you place it close to the XML side? Would you place it close to the random side? Would you place it to the left of prose? Would you place it to the right of prose?


/Roger

[1] http://www.saxonica.com/papers/ideadb-1.1/mhk-paper.xml