FW: XML schemas and thesauri question

Hi all,
 
This interesting use case came up, with Richard's kind permission am forwarding this to the list, I think it's nice to have this on record:
 
-----Original Message-----
From: RichardN [mailto:RichardN@sfwindows.co.uk]
Sent: 18 May 2005 15:00
To: Miles, AJ (Alistair)
Subject: XML schemas and thesauri question



Hello Alistair,

 

I am one of Daniel Whymark's colleagues, and he mentioned to me that you might be able to help with an XML / semantic web type question that I have.  To give you some indication of my current level of understanding: I am comfortable with XML and XML schemas, and have been reading up about semantic web concepts, but I don't have a strong grasp of any of the semantic web -type XML languages such as RDF, XML topic maps, OWL etc.  I have come across SCOS, but that's about as far as it goes.

 

We need to define a standard format for our data entities.  The obvious way of doing this is to define the format using XML schemas.

 

We also have an ISO 2788 style thesaurus with BT (broader term), NT (narrower term) etc.  Some of the data items in the data entities should have their values restricted to a set of preferred terms in the thesaurus.  For example, a data item might need to be restricted so that the set of allowable values includes the thesaurus term "United Kingdom" and all of the narrower terms belonging to the "United Kingdom" term.  In some cases, it may be necessary to restrict the levels of narrower terms underneath the root term that are allowable.

 

My question is: what is the best way of encoding the thesaurus in standards-compliant XML in such a way that it can be linked to the XML schemas, so that we can enforce the data item restrictions I have outlined?

 

Any help you can give me would be much appreciated,

 

Regards,

Richard

 

Richard Northedge

SFW Ltd.