RE: Proposed text for section on application profiles

Hi Rob

My suggestion would be to re-order this slightly because to my mind the most
important point about application profiles is they are schemas that re-use 
data elements from existing schemas, avoiding the need for communities to
create schemas from scratch. Then the secondary point is that application
profiles are not just technical schema descriptions, but also comprise of
guidelines about best practice for using that schema. Some of the
constraints in examples the IRLT's biomedical image archive example could be
represented syntatically, for example in a database field validation
description so need not just be textual descriptions.

cheers,

Dr Mark H. Butler
Research Scientist                HP Labs Bristol
mark-h_butler@hp.com
Internet: http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/marbut/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tansley, Robert [mailto:robert.tansley@hp.com]
> Sent: 02 July 2003 19:29
> To: (www-rdf-dspace@w3.org)
> Subject: Proposed text for section on application profiles
> 
> 
> 
> I hope people don't mind, I basically spliced together the 
> comments made on the list and added a couple of references.  
> (Excuse the LaTeX 'boilerplate')...
> 
> In addition to schema and vocabularies, in many domains there 
> exist rules and `best practice' guidelines for the use of 
> those schema and vocabularies.  These are sometimes used 
> because there is a perceived problem that schema languages, 
> DTDs, ontology languages and suchlike don't provide a formal 
> way of capturing deployment practices.  In other words, there 
> are many things about an application, and its  structuring 
> and organisation of data, which are not captured by the 
> general schema/vocabulary description for Dublin Core, MeSH, etc.
> 
> These application profiles have been defined as ``schemas 
> which consist of data elements from one or more namespaces, 
> combined together by implementors, and optimized for a 
> particular local application''\cite{metadataprinciples}.
> 
> For example, part of an application profile might look like this:
> 
> \begin{quote}
> In ILRT's Biomedical Image Archive we use Dublin Core 
> title/description properties. Each title should begin with a 
> capital letter, and end with a full stop. Titles are 
> mandatory in the biomed database. Descriptions are optional, 
> but should not exceed 1000 characters. The values of 
> dc:subject are drawn from the MeSH classification system. We 
> write dc:date in ISO8601 and use the date that the image was 
> digitized.
> \end{quote}
> 
> Another good example of an application is the Library 
> Application Profile of Dublin Core \cite{dclibap} (used by DSpace).
> 
> Application profiles may be defined informally, as prose 
> meant for human consumption, or more formally.  For example, 
> there is an XML schema for METS application profiles 
> \cite{metsappprofile}.  The content of these profiles is 
> almost always for humans and is application rules for the 
> schema as it applies in a particular context.  While 
> Machine-interpretable application profiles are useful for 
> some purposes (e.g. tailoring a UI) this can often be handled 
> by the schema language directly.
> 
>  Robert Tansley / Hewlett-Packard Laboratories / (+1) 617 551 7624
>

Received on Thursday, 3 July 2003 12:17:48 UTC