Adding metadata to a flat structure to create a hierarchy

[Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

Given a flat key/value pair structure like this:

<key name="key1> val 1 </key>
<key name="key2> val 2 </key>
<key name="key3> val 3 </key>

I would like to add some metadata to describe the relationship between
the keys - for example key2 and key3 are both children of key1 - and
then (hopefully) run some tool over this markup to create a
visualisation of the hierarchy which allows the users to select the
keys they are interested in.

I'd ideally like to express parent/child relationships, and/or group
the keys into categories.  The user will drill down through hierarchy,
or browse the categories, to discover the key names (of which there
are 1000+)

The markup structure is fixed as a flat structure, it can't be
converted to a hierarchical structure (I've simplified the example
here)

RDFa seems like a reasonable approach, maybe FOAF?  Does the list
agree, or have an alternative approach?

Does anyone know of any tools to turn the metadata into the
visualisation, or get me some of the way?

thanks


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com