RE: Review of WSDL 2.0 - RDF Mapping

Comments below.

> From: Bijan Parsia [mailto:bparsia@isr.umd.edu] 
> 
> On Jan 3, 2006, at 6:18 PM, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:

> > [snip]
> >> We intend to have the mapping from the component model to RDF, not 
> >> directly from the XML.
> >
> > Oh.  How would that work?   Given a WSDL 2.0 document, what 
> > would I do to produce the corresponding RDF?
> >
> > It sounds like you are saying that there would be two 
> > mappings, A and B, and you will be doing mapping B:
> >
> >                     A                               B
> > WSDL 2.0 document -----> WSDL 2.0 component model -----> RDF
> >
> > Is that what you mean?
> [snip]
> 
> Yes. So you have to look at the main specs to figure out how 
> to get the component model from the xml, then the mapping to 
> get the rdf for that component model.
> 
> (Obviously, in code, you could do it directly once you've figured it 
> out.)

Although I think this makes obvious sense as an internal strategy, I'm a
little uneasy with the idea that you would only be specifying mapping B
in the published mapping document.

Basically, I think of specs as corresponding to software boundaries, and
I think of the WSDL 2.0 component model as being a mechanism that is
internal to the WSDL 2.0 spec, as a convenient aid in specifying the
WSDL 2.0 language, rather than something that is intended for external
use.  Thus, defining only mapping B feels kind of like accessing
directly into the middle of a piece of software instead of using its
published interface.  

More pragmatically, since the WSDL 2.0 --> RDF mapping is from one
machine-processable language to another, I was assuming (hoping?) that
the mapping itself would be also defined in a machine-processable
language (such as XSLT for example).  Doing so would both allow others
to use it directly (instead of having to implement their own mapping
software), and it would eliminate ambiguity that often appears in an
English prose specification of the mapping (though of course there could
still be ambiguity in the meaning of the resulting RDF).  

In short, I think it will be substantially more valuable if you define
the WSDL 2.0 --> RDF mapping in a machine-processable language.

David Booth

Received on Monday, 9 January 2006 20:28:46 UTC