Re: GRDDL and OWL/XML

On May 13, 2008, at 4:21 PM, Dan Connolly wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-05-13 at 19:54 +0100, Harry Halpin wrote:
> [...]
>> Your argument is that the CR report specifies the function  
>> abstractly.
>> I'm pretty sure the GRDDL WG was not thinking of non-executable
>> functions when developing GRDDL. I would like to here other  
>> opinions of
>> whether or not a GRDDL transformation has to be "executable."
>
> A prose specification of a transformation function is just as
> much a representation of a transformation function as an XSLT  
> document.

Great.

> But...
>
>> My personal opinion is that I am not sure what the utility of it  
>> is if
>> it can't be executable,
>
> exactly,

My perspective on the utility of GRDDL agents is *that they support  
transformations*, not that they *support trasnformations by  
downloading XSLT from the Web*. A particular GRDDL agent that doesn't  
support OWL/XML is, in that configuration, less useful (to me) than a  
GRDDL agent that does (or is configured to). That's fine. The utility  
of a *specification* of the GRDDL transformation is that it tells  
GRDDL agent authors and users what the canonical transformation  
should be.

If you like XSLT for specification, then I would say, Great, so put a  
pdf of your XSLT at the namespace document. (Again, I'm trying to  
distinguish implementation and specification. If specification is  
valuable, I tend to think it's valuable independent of whether that  
specification is implementable.)

> as prose isn't a "widely-supported format"...

It's far more widely supported than XSLT. It's just not executable.

For executable formats, Javascript does *far* more DOM transforms  
client side (albeit not in GRDDL agents) than XSLT.

> "Developers of transformations should make available  
> representations in
> widely-supported formats. XSLT version 1[XSLT1] is the format most
> widely supported by GRDDL-aware agents as of this writing ... ."
>  -- http://www.w3.org/TR/grddl

Since, in part, we're discussing how GRDDL agents should work, I fail  
to see that this is apropos.

CHeers,
Bijan.

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 15:27:17 UTC