RDF Syntax: An XML Schema Approach

The grammar in the RDF 1.0 spec is informal;
it's not something you can feed to lex/yacc and
get an implementation out of.

In Feb 2000, Rick Jelliffe sketched an XML Schema
for RDF. In August last year, I started using
it with XSV to do online validation of RDF
documents. I wrote up some notes in:

RDF Syntax: An XML Schema Approach 
      in progress Aug 2000
http://www.w3.org/2000/07/DAML-0-5-syntax

esp
   http://www.w3.org/2000/07/rdf.xsd

I suggest this sort of thing be used in
stead of an informal grammar when/if the RDF 1.0
spec is clarified/revised.

It would probably create clutter in the
spec to use XML Schema syntax right in
the text of the spec, so I suggest
using something ala

  A meta-grammar for describing XML-based formats
  Bert Bos; 1, 8 Feb 1999
  http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/meta-bnf

in the spec; the XML Schema could be mechanically
generated from that ala

  A Conversion tool from DTD to XML Schema
  http://www.w3.org/2000/04/schema_hack/

(hmm... we could model the grammar in RDF
while we're at it. But transforming
XML Schemas to RDF and back is a topic
for another message...)

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 22 February 2001 16:30:41 UTC