Re: GRDDL and OWL/XML

2008/5/13 Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>:

>
> It appears the 2 reasonable options are:
>
> 1) List of implementations at the namespace doc (Bijan)
> 2) An implementation in XSLT at the namespace doc, with a list of other
> implementations and a warning that the implementation in XSLT is just
> conformant, i.e. not more "normative" than any others.  .


2) provides everything 1) does, plus immediate utility, so to me that seems
the obvious choice. I don't think the question of maintenance overrides
this, work will be needed to ensure any listed implementations remain
conformant. (DRY isn't a strong argument here - any working implementation
will contain something generally isomorphic to the prose).

While an XSLT, Javascript or prose definition of the transformation may all
be considered equivalent representations, without further work there's no
automatic mechanism available to carry out the transformation in the latter
cases. (If I remember correctly this is why certain parts of the spec were
left informative, to allow real-experience to inform alternate mechanisms).

A GRDDL agent can download and apply the XSLT on the fly if it has no prior
knowledge of the source format. It may have a cache containing
frequently-encountered XSLTs, it may have better optimized mechanisms for
well-known transformations. If the developer knows ahead of time that their
agent will be addressing one type of source document significantly more than
another, they can give their agent capabilities to match. XSLT offers a
fallback position for lesser-known formats, and/or agents that don't know
any better.

Cheers,
Danny.