RE: Generating RDF-style URIs from a namespace

We've generally been trying to move to a situation where the namespace
prefixes declared in the prolog are used only at compile time (which brings
them into line with variable names and function names). A recent decision,
not yet reflected in the WDs, is that the QName() constructor will only work
with a string literal, in other words you can't write QName($param) where
$param happens to start with a namespace prefix that's used in the prolog.

I would suggest that rather than using a namespace prefix to refer to the
URI, it's better in this situation to use a variable. In other words, rather
than writing

declare namespace foo = "http://foo/";

write

declare variable $foo = "http://foo/";

This gives you much more flexibility.

Note also the availability of the resolve-uri() function.

Michael Kay 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard Katz [mailto:howardk@fatdog.com] 
> Sent: 08 September 2004 17:16
> To: Michael Kay; 'Per Bothner'
> Cc: www-ql@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Generating RDF-style URIs from a namespace
> 
> The use case, which is still somewhat vague, is motivated by 
> the need to be
> able to work with either qnames or uris (more properly, urirefs) in an
> RDF-processing application, and to be able to 
> programmatically map back and
> forth between the two.
> 
> As a bit of quick background, in a typical RDF scenario the 
> sequence of
> urirefs :
> 
> http://foo/bar
> http://foo/baz
>    ...
> 
> can be said to represent resources belonging to the vocabulary
> "http://foo/", where the "bar" and "baz" suffixes indicate 
> specific terms
> within that vocabulary. Using qnames as a syntactic 
> shorthand, this list can
> be represented more compactly and in more human-friendly fashion as :
> 
> foo:bar
> foo:baz
>  ...
> 
> where the common component "http://foo/" is mapped to the qname prefix
> "foo". This mapping looks very much like an XQuery namespace 
> declaration,
> although it's not exactly the same thing. Close enough for a 
> cigar however.
> RDF commonly uses this adaptation of the XML qname and 
> namespace concepts to
> map from uris to qnames and back again.
> 
> My original question was motivated by a question from a 
> colleague with whom
> I'm just starting to explore the use of XQuery for processing RDF. His
> specific question was :
> 
> "I know that you can declare a namespace in the prolog (and 
> in a number of
> other more subtle ways), but just how can you *use* it? The 
> specs only seem
> to demonstrate use in direct constructors and the like; can 
> you just use it
> to build URIs inline? i.e. I want to generate the sequence ( 
> http://foo/bar,
> http://foo/baz ). Will this do:
> 
>    declare namespace foo="http://foo/"
>    foo:bar, foo:baz
> 
> If this question and my recasting of it were somewhat vague, 
> I apologize.
> We're just starting to explore this area, and we don't yet 
> understand enough
> to be able to ask more meaningful questions or pose a more clearly
> delineated use case at this point. That will come in time.
> 
> In the meantime, both Paul and Per's response's have been 
> helpful to me.
> It's now clear that in order to be able to use an XQuery namespace
> declaration, the prefix-to-namespace mapping needs to be 
> known statically at
> query time. In some RDF scenarios -- when you're working with 
> "well-known"
> prefixes such as "rdf" and "owl" for example -- that works 
> just fine. In
> other scenarios, where the uris are not well known and you 
> would need to be
> able to generate the namespace mappings from the uris 
> dynamically, that
> clearly won't work and straight string manipulation will have 
> to be used
> instead.
> 
> If and when I have a clearer understanding of what the issues 
> are and what a
> clear and realistic use case might be, I'll be happy to post 
> that to the
> list.
> 
> Howard
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: www-ql-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-ql-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
> > Michael Kay
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 1:00 AM
> > To: 'Per Bothner'; 'Howard Katz'
> > Cc: www-ql@w3.org
> > Subject: RE: Generating RDF-style URIs from a namespace
> >
> >
> >
> > I avoided weighing into this because I really found the 
> question very
> > unclear, but since namespaces and QNames are such a thorny area
> > (one that is
> > still being refined in the spec) the use case deserves examination.
> >
> > Could you explain exactly what your input is, what your 
> desired output is,
> > and what information is known statically? Preferably in 
> language that
> > doesn't rely on any knowledge of RDF.
> >
> > Michael Kay
> >
> >
> >
> > > Paul Cotton wrote:
> > >
> > > > This means that the NamespaceDecl cannot contain 
> function calls or
> > > > string concatentation.
> > >
> > > But the question wasn't generating namespaces, but 
> generating URIs.
> > >
> > > It seems to me you should be able to use a cast to a QName:
> > >
> > > declare namespace foo="http://foo/";
> > > for $name in ("bar", "baz")
> > > let $qname := QName(concat("foo:",$name) return
> > > xs:anyURI( concat(namespace-uri-from-QName($name),
> > >                    local-name-from-QName($name)))
> > >
> > > or
> > >
> > > declare namespace foo="http://foo/";
> > > let $foo := namespace-uri-from-QName(QName("foo:unused"))
> > > for $name in ("bar", "baz")
> > > xs:anyURI( concat($foo, $name))
> > > --
> > > 	--Per Bothner
> > > per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 8 September 2004 16:35:15 UTC