- From: Sergey Melnik <melnik@db.stanford.edu>
- Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:43:59 -0700
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- CC: bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com, www-rdf-interest@w3.org, simeon@research.bell-labs.com
"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote: > [...] > However, one of the things that I am trying to do here is to eliminate the > need for an RDF parser. Parsers take some surface syntax (usually a linear > sequence of bits) and produce an abstract syntax structure. Pat uses a > graph as his abstract syntax structure. I am using the XQuery 1.0 Data > Model (well, actually a forest of fragments in that data model) as my > abstract syntax structure. > > One very big (at least to my mind) advantage of my approach is that there > are (or soon will be) programs that produce my abstract syntax > structures from arbitrary XML. Voila, no more need for an RDF parser! Peter, are you familiar with http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Syntax and http://www-db.stanford.edu/~melnik/rdf/syntax.html http://www-db.stanford.edu/~melnik/rdf/fusion.html ? The idea of interpreting arbitrary XML documents semantically is at least as old as RDF exists, I think. Unfortunately, quoting Brian on this, "there ain't no free lunch". Assigning "meaning" to random XML will often produce conterintuitive interpretations, unless the author of the document cooperates and uses XML markup judiciously. The above links suggest some ways of "adorning" XML documents (even as non-intrusively as by simple DTD modifications) so that the corresponding documents have well-defined RDF mappings. A reference implementation exists since 1999. Sergey
Received on Monday, 22 October 2001 18:31:04 UTC