Re: EARL, Typed Node Elements and abbreviated syntax.

Thanks you, Charles

I thought it would be nice for other newcomers to be aware of the fact
that EARL in RDF/XML can have several representations. That puzzled me
at first, especially since there was no examples of the non-abbreviated
EARL syntax on the web. Now there is :-)

Regards,
Nils

tir, 08,.03.2005 kl. 17.46 -0500, skrev Charles McCathieNevile:
> Hi,
> 
> EARL is RDF, and the "abbreviated syntax" is legal RDF equivalent to the  
> "full syntax". (There are in fact other syntax variations that are  
> possible, but since very few people are generating EARL, and in particular  
> because so far few people are reading it and then handing on results they  
> haven't appeared much. Yet.)
> 
> If you want to know which RDF tools can handle RDF you should run them  
> against the RDF test suite (or look for EARL results that suggest that a  
> particular library can handle RDF... Oh. EARL was in its long dark sleep  
> when the RDF group were testing tools, so they made up their own thing  
> instead. I guess it is easy enough to write a convertor).
> 
> The current draft EARL spec uses a number of things, including entity  
> declarations, to try and make the syntax slightly more readable. Since RDF  
> is a) meant for machines, not people, an b) about as readable in any form  
> it apears in, the version I drafted that actually validates doesn't use  
> the entity stuff. It means the document is longer, but it relies on fewer  
> things being implemented in order to achieve interoperability.
> 
> So I think we should point out to developers who don't understand how RDF  
> works that YES, the two versions (and several others) are equivalent, and  
> they need to expect that.
> 
> I typically process EARL with CWM, which is happy to accept anything that  
> in real RDF (and some stuff that isn't) although it generates a particular  
> serialisation itself. I am prety sure that RAP, Raptor, Redland, Jena all  
> have no problems dealing with the variety of RDF i it is valid. The  
> ARP-based validator also gets it right, and shows the same graph for any  
> partiular syntax you feed it.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Chaals
> 
> On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:09:54 -0500, Nils Ulltveit-Moe <nils@u-moe.no>  
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > Is the Typed Node Elements and abbreviated XML representation of EARL
> > regarded as the norm, or is the more verbose rdf:Description XML
> > representation regarded as equivalent?
> 
> > Seen from an RDF perspective, these two representations are equivalent.
> >> From a human perspective, that seems strange. Especially for developers
> > who have a superficial knowledge of RDF/XML and only wants to output the
> > required strings to generate EARL.
> >
> > It would also be nice if the ERT tool register contained a register of
> > EARL compliant libraries. Especially if EARL tools are required to be
> > able to parse and then store the abbreviated and typed node syntax.
> 
> 
-- 
Nils Ulltveit-Moe <nils@u-moe.no>

Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2005 08:27:07 UTC