SEM: Integrating XML Schema and OWL

The DAML+OIL DatatypeProperty accepts the URI of an XML Schema type as the
rdfs:range restriction.

This is great, except that XML Schema does not generally provide
URIreferences for its datatypes (the predefined XML Schema datatypes are an
exception).

Rather than referencing an XML Schema datatype directly I have taken the
approach via something like:

1) Provide an OWL interpretation for an arbitrary XML Schema (via the XSLT
http://www.openhealth.org/WOWG/XSDtoSchema.xsl) using a simplified XML
Infoset ontology http://www.openhealth.org/WOWG/Schema.owl.

2) Define an XML Schema type restriction as roughly "a restriction on an
Element to an [XML Schema] Type having the name 'foo' and the namespace
'bar' i.e. the XML Schema Type is defined as an RDF 'bNode' having the named
properties rather than directly using a URIreference -- this is for the
explicit reason that XML Schema does not uniquely assign a URIreference to
its types (sigh...)

Note that this approach is completely compatible with the RDF datatyping
approach which deals with types that have explicit URIrefs.

If I can get this working it should be possible to:

1) (roughly) ascertain that a particular XML document is an instance of the
class defined by an XML Schema. This roughly corresonds to XML Schema
validation.
2) Determine whether two different XML Schema share an identical instance
set (i.e. are equal).

and most importantly,

3) through the use of "equivalentTo"s, assert which information items in a
given XML document correspond to instances of various properties and classes
in an ontology. This would enable OWL inferences to be drawn on collections
of XML documents, or representations of non-XML multimedia documents.

Jonathan

Received on Sunday, 17 March 2002 19:14:05 UTC