Re: does RDF require understanding all 82 URI schemes?

Dave Beckett wrote:

<snip />

> > How can you serialize that back to XML?  This isn't an abstract
> > problem; the Namespace for the XML Schema datatyping is
> >
> >   http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-datatypes
> >
> > and the Namespace for the magic "xml" prefix is
> >
> >   http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
> >
> > That means that the data type for a decimal number in RDF's view is
> >
> >   http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-datatypesdecimal
> >
> > and xml:lang in RDF's view is
> >
> >   http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespacelang
> >
> > Ouch!  Fortunately, neither of these is likely to be used as a
> > property name, but other similar ones likely will be.  We can
> > hard-code some into RDF processors, but in the general case, we have a
> > very bad mess on our hands.
> 
> Although this is a wierd use of URIs, it does work and RDF systems
> can automate that so that no user code need care. In
>    http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2001Jan/0227.html
> I went into this further and others commented in the "Formation of RDF terms"
> thread.

The only way I can see of handling this in a complete way is for the
RDF/XML->triples conversion to add additional triples. 

Each URI that is generated from a qname needs to be tracked. Might I
suggest the following enhancements to the RDF/XML syntax for the above
examples:

<rdf:qname
rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-datatypedecimal">
  <rdf:nspart
rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-datatype"/>
  <rdf:localpart>decimal</rdf:localpart>
</rdf:qname>

<rdf:qname rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespacelang">
  <rdf:nspart rdf:resource="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace"/>
  <rdf:localpart>decimal</rdf:localpart>
</rdf:qname>

Gabe
-- 
--------------------------- 
http://www.jfinity.com/gabe

Received on Friday, 9 February 2001 10:56:44 UTC