RE: Arbitrary XML documents as custom (was Xinclude word-smithing)

> From: Ian Davis [mailto:Ian.Davis@talis.com] 
> 
> > From: David Booth
> > A key application of GRDDL that I am concerned about is where 
> > GRDDL is used to treat arbitrary XML documents as custom 
> > serializations of RDF.
> 
> Can you elaborate on why you believe GRDDL should support "arbitrary"
> XML documents as custom serializations of RDF?

Yes, and thank you for asking.  An important application I see for GRDDL
is to facilitate the *evolutionary* adoption of RDF in a world that is
entrenched in XML by allowing the same pre-existing XML document formats
to be used by both XML and RDF applications.  

>From the perspective of an RDF application, the ideal would be that all
of these documents are in RDF.  But they are not.  They are stuck in
XML, and because there are existing, intertwined applications that use
them, which are *not* going to be converted to RDF any time soon, the
challenge is: how can these arbitrary XML formats be viewed as RDF while
still being plain XML?  Even the document owners may wish that these
applications could suddenly switch to RDF in one big bang, but they
cannot.

That's where GRDDL comes in.  If GRDDL can be used to transform the
(arbitrary) XML document to RDF that captures the *full* meaning of the
XML document -- as defined by the document owner -- then by policy
decision, the RDF can become the authoritative source of the meaning of
that document.  In other words, the document becomes a serialization of
RDF.  (Note this does not mean that such documents would necessarily
exercise all of RDF.  Typically they would exercise only the part that
they need.)  This enables two key benefits:

 - Both RDF and XML applications can use the same XML documents while
being assured that they are assigning the same meaning to it.

 - The meaning of the XML document is freed from the syntax, thus
allowing the syntax to change (versioning, for example) while retaining
the meaning.

Eventually, if all of the apps that use the XML document are converted
to RDF, the XML version may only be used as serializations of RDF.

This evolutionary approach is described more fully in the paper that I
presented to the W3C Web of Services workshop a few months ago:
http://dbooth.org/2007/rdf-and-soa/rdf-and-soa-paper.htm



David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software
+1 617 629 8881 office  |  dbooth@hp.com
http://www.hp.com/go/software

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent
the official views of HP unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Received on Monday, 18 June 2007 12:10:17 UTC